Industry Division
Outbounds with open slots
Outbound patterns can leave slots open to any car, or to a set of destinations. Choosing which car fills a slot cheaply is the puzzle, because the handy one is rarely the right one.
4 hand-made yards, pars from 4 to 7 moves. Every yard has two challenge variants that open once it is finished at par.
The yards
| # | Yard | Par | The job |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Any Car Will Do | 7 | The outbound wants an Albany car, then any car at all, then Concord. The Boston cars stay on Track 3. Pick the filler that costs the least to reach. |
| 2 | Either Way | 5 | The middle slot takes a Boston or a Concord car, whichever is handier. An Erie car is tied to the engine and belongs nowhere in particular. |
| 3 | Two Open Slots | 4 | Albany, anything, Boston, anything. The Concord car stays on Track 3. The two fillers are in the same stack as the cars they ride with: pick the order that falls out of the pull. |
| 4 | Local and Through | 6 | Two trains to build from one stack. The local takes Albany and one more; the through takes Boston and two more. Both leave on the clock, and the fillers have to be shared out. |
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