Learn to Play: Wabash Cannonball/Northern Pacific

These are two lightweight train games (Northern Pacific is practically a small abstract).

We'll have a chance to play each (or play NP multiple times).

Descriptions:

Norther Pacific:

Players start the game with one large investment cube and three small investment cubes in hand. The game board shows the United States from Minnesota to Washington; game play starts in Minneapolis/St. Paul. On a turn, a player either places one of their cubes in a city (other than Seattle) that hasn't yet been reached by the train or builds track. If they build track, they choose one of the railroad lines exiting the city where the train is currently located and place a locomotive on it to show the current endpoint of the railroad line. Track has directional arrows on it, and a new train line can never move against the arrows or back to a city that the railroad has already visited.
When the railroad visits a city where players have placed investment cubes, they retrieve those cubes and take additional cubes from the supply: one new cube if they had a small cube in the city and two new cubes if they had a large cube.
When the railroad reaches Seattle, the round ends. Players tally the number of cubes in hand and records this number on the "good investments" track; they record the number of their cubes still on the game board on the "bad investments" track. They then reset the board as at the start of the game, then begin a new round. After three rounds, whoever has made the most good investments wins; if players are tied, then the tied player who has made the fewest bad investments wins.
You can play a single round of the game to determine a winner, if desired, or you can play new rounds with no recorded score, with a player winning the game if they win two rounds.

Wabash Cannonball:

Wabash Cannonball, which has also been released as Chicago Express, was the first title in Winsome Games' Historic Railroads System.
In the game, the B&O, C&O, Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads drive from the East Coast across the growing eastern U.S. to Chicago. Smaller, more aggressive railroads like the Wabash spring up to further expand America's extensive railroads. The sharpest railroad executives vie for the maximum return on their investment in this luck-free business game lasting about one hour.
The game plays out over a maximum of eight rounds. In each round, players take turns choosing one of three available actions:

• Auctioning a share of one of the railroad companies.
• Expanding the rail system of one of the railroad companies.
• Developing one of the board's hexes.

Each of these actions is available only a limited number of times. As soon as two actions can no longer be chosen, a dividend phase is executed in which all players gain income from the railroad companies of which they have shares. After this dividend phase, the number of actions is reset, and a new round begins.
The game ends after eight rounds or if one of the following conditions is met:

• Three or more companies have no more locomotives.
• Three or more companies have no more shares.
• The general supply contains at most three houses.

At this point, the player with the most money wins.