What if ... Rethinking Carlisle

Currently, if a Company manages to run a 6X train on the route of the East Coast Main Line (ECML), with all cities fully developed, that route will generate £500.  The equivalent train running on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) would generate £480.  In 18GB as it stands, this is a significant difference.  The ECML route will yield £50/share for a ten-share company while the WCML will only yield £40/share, thanks to the rounding rule.

This is deliberate, because it is harder to get markers in the places necessary to run the ECML route.  The WCML route is comparatively open, with Preston being the main bottleneck.

If I were to remove the rounding rule, the WCML train would yield £48/share, which is not a significant difference from the ECML train.  This would remove some of the incentive to complete the ECML.  Therefore I'm wondering about options to make the WCML a little tougher to complete.

My main idea is to change Carlisle from being a relatively open city, with three station spaces, to an ordinary single-station city.  This would offer more options for blocking routes through Carlisle.  Even when the hex is upgraded to a brown tile, it would still have only two  two station spaces.  So the West Coast route might become as challenging (or nearly so) as the East Coast route, making for a tighter tile-laying game overall.

A consequence of this change is that the tempo of tile lays would change, i.e. it would take an extra tile action to build through Carlisle.  So I'm thinking I would introduce a new Private Railway, the Newcastle and Carlisle (NC), that would offer an extra tile action in Carlisle.  This Private could possible replace the Stockton & Darlington and its atypical influence of controlling the start of the NER.

I could even give the NC the ability to lay a free station marker in Carlisle.  This would certainly intensify the competition for the WCML route.

In some ways, this seems quite appealing.  I like the competition for routes in 18GB and this change would add to that.  However, I think the current map is probably a better game overall, with its choice between a relatively open route and a higher-paying but more challenging route.