When I started my adventure with 18xx in 2015, the subject of these games rarely appeared on podcasts. Probably 10 times I listened to the episode of Heavy Cardboard about 18xx! There hasn’t been any podcast exclusively dedicated to 18xx. Sometimes 18xx was mentioned in episodes of The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, of course some episodes of Heavy Cardboard and Punching Cardboard too. And now? Another podcast on this subject has just appeared. Moreover, Galatolol with Adam have their own podcast and now you can listen about 18xx even without knowing English! That’s not all, because a few days ago I discovered a channel about these games on YouTube, also in Polish (from ‘Dżentelmeni przy stole’ eng. ‘The Gentlemen at the Table’, link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ORLK8Q0Lm6Vp4-fTMGLcA).
I decided to make a small summary because each of these podcasts deserves attention and maybe you don’t know some of them. Podcast are shuffled in descending order by the number of episodes available.
Derailed – An 18xx podcast
It has been recording since 2019 and there are already 56 ready episodes. As you can guess, the list of topics covered is very large and we can listen to these ones devoted only to individual titles (1862, 18Mex, 18DO, 1846, 1889), as well as the mechanics of 18xx games (recently about choosing a company which is the first to launch in the game). If you don’t know this podcast yet, you have a really long list to catch up on 🙂
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/derailed-an-18xx-podcast-893238
https://anchor.fm/derailed18xx
The Train Rush
This is the oldest of the described here. They have been recording since 2018 and they have had 24 episodes ready. Craig, Dave and Joe talk about 18xx with great enthusiasm. The quality of their recordings and general preparation for the subject deserve a great praise from us. If they are talking about a selected game, they do it in a professionally way really. You can hear that they have a well-thought-out whole episode and what will happen in it! As for me, I would only like more and I keep my fingers crossed for them. In one of the last episodes they talk about 18MAN. An interesting fact: in one of their episodes you can hear about the game that will be releasing soon by RoB 🙂
https://thetrainrush.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheTrainRush/
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcast/49709/train-rush
Wheel Tapping
Podcast hosted by Tony Fryer and Chris Whitpan. Tony made me interested in the subject of 18xx a few years ago, and thanks to his enthusiasm, I decided to take a chance and I bought my first 18xx game. They have been recording it since 2019, currently we can listen to 21 episodes. Each of them is dedicated to a different game from the 18xx series, but recently they have broken this pattern and they created the first episode dedicated to print and play games. They invited John Harres, who tells us how to print PnP games.
https://wheeltapping.libsyn.com/
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/train-shuffling/id1486625228
Train Shuffling
The podcast has been running since the end of 2019. So far, we have had 20 episodes (plus a few bonus ones), in which, among others, we can listen to an interview with Scott Peterson from AAG, learn more about 1833NE (which will be released by GMT), or listen to a long episode about 1846 strategy. But this is just a short list of interesting things raised in their broadcasts. I have the impression that the authors of the podcast have recently slowed down a bit with publishing new materials (when you compare year to year), but as you can read below, they have big plans for the future 🙂
We got comment to our article from the Train Shuffling team: Thanks for including us – not sure where you got the impression that we’ve slowed down in releases though? Our last full episode was on March 1st, with a bonus episode on the 25th all about how we’re excited about the podcast and upcoming content 🙂
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcast/59366/train-shuffling
https://anchor.fm/trainshuffling/episodes/Welcome-to-Train-Shuffling-e8hd2e
https://open.spotify.com/show/3WS8hhjKOu2PIP4RgIOBcS
Driving Trains
This podcast was created in 2020. 10 episodes were released in a very short time, but the last one was published over a year ago 🙁
https://anchor.fm/driving-trains
Choo Choo Crew
This is the latest podcast I have discovered recently. This is a separate series prepared by the authors of the ‘Dads on a Map’ podcast, devoted to railway games, and of course 18xx. So far, they have recorded 5 episodes, and this year they released 4 of them. I know that the beginnings are the easiest, but these guys are very pleasant to listen to and I’m very curious about the next ones.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepodcast/61182/dads-map
https://www.facebook.com/dadsonamap
Dwójki rdzewieją (The Twos Rust)
This is a Polish podcast dedicated to 18xx. Currently they have 6 episodes, during which the authors introduce us to the world of 18xx. Of course, we recommend it and not only because one of the authors is the editor of RoB 😉
https://anchor.fm/dwojkirdzewieja
To this list it could be added probably 100 or more individual episodes of various podcasts that describe more than just railroad games.
Note: Some of the above are very well positioned on Google and I was able to find information about them with any problem. If you know any links that should be added to the above list, please write to us.