I have a retro re-published game from the same era, it would appear, as the original Touring England called Coronation Scot. The premise is racing by rail, from London to Glasgow. The item is interesting as a curiosity, but the game is IMO both unrealistic, and extremely feeble. The board represents the West Coast London Glasgow route, compressed into a sort of elongated S-shape. Four parallel tracks, for up to four players: 78 intermediate stations, of various sizes. You throw the dice and advance your piece the appropriate number of stations-worth. A dozen or so of the stations feature instructions saying go forward to... or go back to... (x station).
Myself and brother (the same as in our planned scurrilous adaptation of Monopoly, mentioned upthread) undertook a project to try to elaborate very considerably on the Coronation Scot game; hoping to give it greater verisimilitude, and make it more entertaining. Our idea was set in the era of approximately 100 years ago: theme, as with the original, a race by rail between London and Glasgow, for up to four players; but involving four separate and different rail routes (East Coast via Edinburgh; West Coast; Midland + G&SWR; and a fantasy fourth, based in its southern part -- on the Great Central main line; and on fictional prolongations thereof far northward). We felt that this game, as experimented with, had possibilities; but I fear that we are better at having ideas, than seeing them through to completion...
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Another recalled with fondness, is a spin-off from Monopoly by the same firm, Waddingtons: the game Totopoly, with a horse-racing theme. One reckons that said spin-off must have been developed rapidly from the M-game: in my childhood, we had a Totopoly set which had originally belonged to my mother and her siblings in their teens in the 1930s.
I have heard mention now and again of Totopoly, in more recent times indication that it would seem not to have sunk without trace half a century and more ago: but from what I recall, it would appear to me not the most brilliant idea ever, for a board game -- seems to be fairly "in eclipse" now. As a kid, I delighted in it: but I would reckon that that was down to its, in my perception, marvellous complexity and ingenuity which on the board-game scene, can be a thumbs-down factor: many players value, rather, straightforwardness and unhampered ferocity.
I recall Totopoly featuring as it were, two separate boards one physical board, made two by a central thick paper leaf, printed on both sides. The different boards were for the two sequential phases of the game. The first phase was about training the horses; the second, about actually racing them. The whole thing was wondrously elaborate as said, probably more so than would be to the taste of the majority of board-game punters. There were twelve horses, all with to me, superbly sonorous names (were also numbered, 1 - 12): they fell into four categories, each with its respective colour, according to their degree of weight and power. There were two separate, splendidly-named, stables: one for the two more-heavyweight, one for the two more-lightweight, classes. (The whole thing had, when one thinks about it, resemblances to the steam-locomotive scene in the days of steams ascendancy.) The horses were run, first round the training track; then (turn the page) round the truly-race one. There were chance cards, and other assorted bells and whistles.
The real-racing phase of the game must obviously have featured betting on the races; but I suspect that that aspect of things went over my head as a pre-teen I recall nothing about the betting side of the game. I just loved the verging-on-crazy detail and complexity and idiosyncracy. I recall that horse no. 12 was called Jerome Fandor: last and least in the hierarchy, and seemingly a born loser -- the poor old thing seemed always and invariably to come in last.
I can see why Totopoly never took off in a very big way: it must have looked essentially a bit pedestrian and feeble, in comparison with the exhilarating raw, aggressive banditry of Monopoly. Nonetheless, it appealed to juvenile me. At the present time, a different firm markets a horse-race-themed board game called The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game; which I have played once or twice, and find that it has its excitements Id suspect that it has borrowed an idea or two, from Totopoly. For me, however, The Really Nasty... feels rather modern-day brash and crude, in comparison with what I see as the pre-war elegance, restraint, and just plain appealing silliness, of its predecessor of some three-quarters of a century ago.
