In my board game, the only record of passenger deliveries is the stack of dollars awarded. Segments eligible for bonus are randomly determined by drawn cards and marked by a magnetic disc. When someone passes over the segment, they claim the disc and flip over another card to identify the next bonus segment. The discs are tallied up at the end of the game. So there's not a "scoreboard"--during the game, it's not readily apparent who's winning.
My vision is that the O gauge version of the game would be more about cooperation than competition. Everyone works as part of a "crew." How many points can that crew score in 45 minutes, either by completing deliveries, or earning bonuses for track segments and scenario cards?
I haven't discussed scenarios in this thread, because their completion probably isn't something that could be verified by LCS. Among other things, the scenarios might refer to specific equipment. They could be incorporated dynamically through a "deck-building" process. Example: CSX is famous for its Juice train running from Florida to the northeast. If you come to visit and bring a CSX diesel, we shuffle a few cards into the deck that award extra points for pulling an orange juice reefer with a CSX locomotive. The potential scenarios are only limited by your imagination. They can be realistic, or completely fanciful, like "every car in your freight train must have the color blue." This would depend on the age and background of the crew.
In any case, these game mechanisms ascribe purpose to building trains and running them. They encourage variety in terms of the make-up of trains, and which tracks they run on. During an operating session, even a passive observer would get to see many different trains doing different things.
