In Ride the Rails you invest in rail companies, build a rail network across America and take visitors to as many places as possible.

The game consists of six rounds. In a round, players buy shares of companies, expand the railways of companies they own shares in, and transport a passenger to a city. Each round a new company comes into play and each company has its own rules. This means there is a lot of diversity in a game of Ride the Rails.

All this makes Ride the Rails a game with simple rules (the explanation is only 1 sheet of paper), but there are still plenty of strategic choices to be made.