Naturelich Games

Gameplay
From a conceptual perspective, the railroad extension is very similar to the official River expansions. The railroad cards are played before the regular game kicks-off to create a bigger starting area. All tiles in this extension contain railroad tracks which need to be connected properly. It is also possible to put one of your own people onto the railroad tracks. Again, very similar to the streets in Carcassonne, each tile scores one point, if the connection is completed (either by a train station or a switch). After all the track cards have been played, all followers return to hand but the players score no points for incomplete tracks.
In contrast to Carcassonne - The River, the railroad tracks don't necessarily end properly at a train station, i.e. they may end in open territory. After all tracks have been laid the players are allowed to put either city tiles or meadows adjacent to it.

Tile from Carcassonne - Die Eisenbahn. (c) by Matthias Hecking.
Carcassonne is published by Hans-im-Glück Verlag and designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede.

Naturelich my opinion
The cards are well-designed and the railroad tracks look good. Personally, I am not so sure whether I like the entire idea of trains in Carcassonne. After all the game has more of a medieval touch which does not correlate to the train theme. I can see railroad fans using this extension, but for me - although I'm a fan of Ticket to Ride - it seems a little bit off-topic and strange. The gameplay mechanics are not new - we have seen this all in The River a few years ago. To some degree it's even worse, since no proper closing tiles (like The River's lake or found) are provided. This results in an odd-looking board layout. To sum it up: for me, this is not a must-have extension with very little additional value.

Download
The extension may be downloaded at the official Carcassonne site. Click here and look for "Eisenbahn Erweiterung", to get your copy.