What 'Ticket to Ride'-like game did I play in the early 2000s?

[Simon Hogwood]

So I was playing some Ticket to Ride this afternoon, and was reminded again of a similar game I played about fifteen-twenty years ago (although it may have been older). It has a similar railroad-building premise, but the way I remember it the board was a map of Europe covered in dots, and you made tracks by connecting the dots with a dry-erase marker. There was also an element where some cities produced a certain resource, and others bought it, and the idea was to connect the two - the example I remember is "cork to Cork", which required connecting Spain to Ireland.

Does anyone else remember this? Is it just an early version of Ticket to Ride? Or did I hallucinate the entire thing?

 

[Bunch]

So I was playing some Ticket to Ride this afternoon, and was reminded again of a similar game I played about fifteen-twenty years ago (although it may have been older). It has a similar railroad-building premise, but the way I remember it the board was a map of Europe covered in dots, and you made tracks by connecting the dots with a dry-erase marker. There was also an element where some cities produced a certain resource, and others bought it, and the idea was to connect the two - the example I remember is "cork to Cork", which required connecting Spain to Ireland.

Does anyone else remember this? Is it just an early version of Ticket to Ride? Or did I hallucinate the entire thing?

Empire Builder. I believe it had lots of expansions too. Including a dragon one if I'm remembering correctly

 

[Simon Hogwood]

That looks like the one. I didn't see a dragon expansion, but apparently the one I played was called Eurorails:



Thanks a lot, Bunch - that's been bugging me for months.

 

[E-Rocker]

I played the Australian version once. I had fun even though it's not really my kind of game. I think it too us something like 4 or 5 hours to play it.