The Railroad is here: READING RAILROAD is now part of your Monopoly Hotels game!

If you have been following the chatter on the web about Monopoly Hotels even the least little bit, you are well aware that one of the most-requested items for this game is the remaining utilities - the WaterWorks and the RailRoad. (And, of course, the remaining hotels, but that's another story.)

Well, on Friday, EA did a surprise upgrade to the game. Why a surprise? Because mostly, the upgrades seem to happen on Thursday. So, at the very least, it was a surprise to me, to note that iTunes offered an upgrade.

I went ahead and installed the upgraded, and woohoooo! As soon as you enter the game, you just know there is something different, and you know exactly what  is different - it looks like the RailRoad is finally here!

To be honest, I'd wondered what Electronic Arts could do with a RailRoad - if it was something like the Electricity Board, it would have been a huge yawn, nothing to get excited about. I definitely wasn't one of the people wanting the utilities, and, personally, I am still working on filling the hotels I do own with the best rooms I can afford, so I am also not unduly worried about the lack of new hotels.

Anyway, to get right into the new goodies, I went off to find the Railroad - it's wedged in between Baltic and Oriental:

Not too prepossessing at first glance, eh? I was about to shrug and move on, and then decided to click on it.

And wow, I have to say, KUDOS to the game designers at Electronic Arts. This new Reading Railroad is actually meant to be interactive, unlike the rest of the game, which is mostly passive.

You get to build a collection of trains, you can send trains off to your FaceBook buddies, and you can obviously also receive trains from your FB pals. Best of all, you get M$ and/or gold for your activities within the railroad! 

 

     

     

Easy enough.

Click on the RailRoad, and you are greeted by the conductor explaining everything you need to know about the trains.

Having owned the RailRoad (by the way, it looks like you do not need to purchase it, you automatically own it!) for a whole day and a half, I've noticed that I seem to receive incoming trains from Monopoly Hotels 4 or more times a day, and that at least ONE of those MH trains gives me 1 gold. Woohoo! Another easy gold per day is nothing to sneeze at. 

The other MH trains so far have yielded M$1,000 each time - not super exciting, but better than 0. 

This is great for people who don't spend much time in the game - if you collect rent even once a day, chances are you'll get your single gold bar each day, and that adds up!

When the Arrivals board indicates that there's a train waiting for you, go ahead and click on it.

And voila! You have a train in the station ... you do have to wait while the train slowly chugs by ...

 

And there it is, finally: 

Or perhaps it's M$ instead of gold: 

And then you move on to the Departures ...

As you can see, you have options.

You can send a train to your FaceBook friends:

     

     

I have to admit, I'm not much of a FaceBook person, so I haven't added anyone at all to my send list:

If you do have friends, you can select which ones to send a train to, or just let MH pick at random ... and you get a gold bar each time a train leaves the station!

A word of caution - you may wish to spare your non-Monopoly-Hotels-playing friends from getting the train, so think twice before you just click on "Random" for destinations!

If you get careless, you're at the very least going to get a few raised eyebrows and sniggers at your choice of pastime ... don't say you weren't warned!

Speaking of trains leaving the station, did you realise there are multiple types of trains, with different payouts, different departure frequencies, and even different numbers of wagons in the train? 

By default, everyone gets the first train, the Steam Locomotive.

But if you choose the Buy Trains option on the Departures screen, then you realise that you do have other kinds of trains available to you:

     

Sadly, all the additional trains cost real money - you can see that in the screenshots above. It's unlikely I will be purchasing any of the fancy trains (yeah, call me cheap!), but if you do, what exactly would you get for the purchase price?

I am glad you asked. 

The pricier the train, the better the return, plus, the bought-for-cash trains can leave the station more frequently, giving you your payout more frequently, as well!

The basic Steam Locomotive, for example, can pretty much only leave once a day ...

The others? Depends on what you pay for them.

     

     

And the priciest of them all? The Bullet Train?

For a whopping $69.99, you get to load up to 25 wagons, with a potential to pay you 50 gold every 4 hours! Very nice indeed!

Yes, I'll admit the additional trains get pricey as you move up in your collection, but I predict there will be a few people who view these as great investments. 

Remember that the best gold-producing room so far, the Golden Cauldron room, only pays out a maximum of 30 gold every day ... with a single Bullet Train, you could be guaranteed 300 gold every single day just by sending out that train at 4-hour intervals! 

People who really want steady streams of gold would do well to pick up the pricier trains - not to mention, I bet there's a thrill to completing the collection!

You may be wondering, from a practical viewpoint, how would you know that you have a train ready to leave, or that someone has sent you a train?

Never fear, they've thought about that, too!

EA have created a new notification icon to indicate that there are trains waiting to arrive or depart from the RailRoad - see the little red locomotive at the top of the screen in the pics below:

     

     

So you won't have to wonder if it's time to check the RailRoad again.

The only thing missing from the RailRoad, in my opinion, is the ability to collect experience points. There are NO options here that give you any XP. That was a slight oversight on the EA designers' part.

But on the whole? 

This is a fabulous upgrade to the game, and I have to say, "Good work, EA"! They've integrated the social media aspect in a spectacularly fun way, making it interesting for both sender and recipient! That's what I call a win-win scenario, with both sender and recipient getting something out of it!