What was the world's first railway board game?

Wallis's Locomotive Game of Railroad Adventures feels a lot like snakes and ladders. To win, a player must reach the central space. Instead of rolling dice, players draw numbers from a “reticule” (a lady’s purse) and advance that many spaces on the board. They then read out instructions from a book corresponding to the space where they landed.

Players also start with 25 tokens which they may lose or gain throughout the game. They can exchange the tokens for prizes at the end of the game. Alternatively, players can play for money, but the rules say any winnings should be paid to the “benevolent or charitable object which shall be recommended by the lady of the house”.

Watch a play through of the game by our curator Chris Valkoinen and special guest Geoff Marshall to discover more about how the game plays:

The game was certainly an expensive luxury item. The board was printed on pieces of card that were mounted on linen so it could be folded away like a map. The board was hand painted to add colour, and each copy of the game was painted differently. The well-dressed characters that appear on the board also hint towards the wealth of the game’s players.

Many board games designed in this period served as educational tools. Some of Wallis’ games were themed around subjects like travel and science while others focussed on religious or moral teaching.

Games were also popular with Quakers and the temperance movement as an alternative form of entertainment to drinking alcohol. When this game was published around 1842, railways were still a relatively new innovation. The first long-distance railways had arrived in London only a few years previously. Most people had still not taken a journey by train and there were travel guides to inform anxious travellers.

Some of the game’s spaces could be interpreted as teaching the basics of rail travel; unlike your coachman, the train wouldn’t wait for you if you overslept, and you better hope your luggage doesn’t go missing and your train doesn't get trapped in a snowdrift. 

However, not all games were an educational tool. Chess was popular and competitive chess was a growing phenomenon in the mid-19th century. Parlour games were a popular form of evening entertainment and gambling on a variety of card games was common in upper-class private clubs. 

Wallis may have made the game just to cash in on the zeitgeist. The first half of the 1840s was the height of railway mania, not only a financial bubble but also a cultural phenomenon. People were excited to share their experiences of this new technology. Victorians loved a good souvenir and railways were fashionable. A railway board game may have looked like an obvious choice for Wallis. 

Science Museum Group

Our modern society is defined by gaming. The global gaming industry now generates more revenue than any other form of entertainment. Tabletop gaming (board, card and roleplaying games) has similarly been booming for the last couple of decades. In the 1980s, games started to transition from a mostly childhood activity to an adult one.

Now, in a mostly digital world, tabletop games offer something different from staring at a screen and an excuse to interact with friends. For the estimated 1 in 5 people who are neurodivergent, games can also make social interaction easier through their structure and rules. 

Railways have been a very fertile theme for board games. The website Board Game Geek which maintains a comprehensive database of board games, lists more than 1700 train-themed board games. They include the current top-ranked game called Brass: Birmingham, an economic strategy game about building factories and moving goods during the Industrial Revolution.  

Just like any other type of entertainment, there is tremendous diversity in railway board games. You could try; drawing train tracks to solve a puzzle in Railroad Ink, building the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russian Railroads, working with your friends to guide trains to their destinations against the clock in Switch and Signal, searching out the saboteur amongst your fellow passengers in Stop the Train, ruthlessly trading stocks and shares to take control of railway companies in 18xx games like 1830: Railways and Robber Barons, or charting a journey across the USA in the deceptively simple family game Ticket to Ride. 

So why are railways such a popular theme for game designers? Firstly, railways (like games) need structure and rules to function. Trains must not leave the track and they must obey the signals. Railways also create narrative structure for stories. Journeys have a start and an end, just like a story. Narrative is an important function of creating an enjoyable game, so that players feel something important has happened. Railways also create closed environments where a story can play out, something Agatha Christie used to great effect in Murder on the Orient Express and which is emulated in the game Stop the Train. Railways also rely on technology and strive for efficiency which are important factors in many Eurogames, with their frequent use of economic strategy and tech-trees. But perhaps the most important factor is that railways create networks and maps, which easily lend themselves to the design of the all-important board in board games.

If this has got you in the mood for a game and you fancy having a go at Wallis’ Locomotive Game of Railroad Adventures, you can find a downloadable version of the game that you can print and play at home, including the original board and rule book. Just like the Victorian players, you’ll need to find your own tokens to play with and cut out the pieces of card to put in a bag that you can draw from.

To add to the experience, you can also enjoy Irving Finkel reading out the rules for the board locations. Load the video below in YouTube and use the timestamps in the video description to jump to the space you’ve landed on. Enjoy!