The project originated from an idea of JoWooD's to produce a railway simulation that would make the events surrounding the emergence of the transcontinental railway in the USA in the 19th century an exciting and playable experience. This game concept met with great interest on the part of Kritzelkratz 3000, as there are many lovers of this genre among their developers. That was in the winter of 2001/2002.

First of all, a rough draft had to be drawn up. The creative minds of both companies met again and again. Finally, after many lengthy sessions of brainstorming, heated discussions, shaping and discarding ideas, the first version of the conceived rough draft was prepared. It contains the fundamental elements and priorities of the game: Exploring, tracklaying and trading.

Within three months of work the originally ten pages of rough draft were fleshed out to a detailed outline comprising almost 200 pages. The greatest part of this piece of work was brought about by two people: Oliver Staude-Müller of JoWooD and Andreas Scholl of Kritzelkratz 3000, who has also taken charge of the project management and will be introduced in the next chapter of "Team inside", where he'll tell you about the embellishment of the detailed outline.