In addition, if you want to cross someones track, you have to build a junction, which costs one. And if you want to run parallel track, you have to pay 2 per half-hex of parallel track and you have to buy a juncture, too. During the build phase, the first person to connect to a city gets a 6 credit bonus.
After a round of building, the first player shifts over one space, and the new first player rolls a die to determine how much can be built in the next round. The building stage ends when a building round ends with nearly all of the cities built to, and then the race round begins.
In the race round, there are a series of races. Two of the cities are randomly determined to be the race. Players then decide (in order from most money to least) if they want to run the race. Then they decide what route they want to use. If you run on your own track, you run for free, but for every hex of someone else's track you use, you have to pay them one credit, up to a maximum of 10. Then the race is held, each player rolls 2 dice and moves along his or her route. The first to the destination wins, but each player gets the same number of die rolls, so if more than one person gets in during the same turn, the person that had the most leftover moves wins the race, otherwise it is a tie. First place pays 20, second pays 10. If you can't run a race by yourself, you can team up with another player. You get to ride either player's track for free, and split costs and winnings.
After the race, both the cities used are crossed off from the list of available cities, players can build track (with basically the same rules, except that you spend your own money and if you cross or run parallel to someone's track, you pay them) and the next race is run. Some races are special in that they don't end up in cities, but in special locations on the border of the map (such as across the mississippi in the US Map). The player with the most credits after the last race wins.
The only problem I have with the layout of the game is the way you pick racing cites. Each city has a number (sometimes two or three for major cities) like 11, 35, 61 or some such. You roll the dice and read the red die as the tens place. This is simple and elegant, but since you can only use each number once, it gets annoying re-rolling the dice to determine the next race. Our group used a variety of dice to eliminate the re-rolls, but it would probably have been better if they had included a pack of cards numbered 11-36. You could simply have drawn two cards and set them aside. As it is, I am probably going to use a set of playing cards and mark them from 11-36 and special 1-6.
On the other hand, the game plays in about 90 minutes to two hours, and makes for a fairly tense game even if you play with 'gentle' building, because of the fun of racing the trains.
If the game has any problem, it is that one player could easily get locked out of any good builing area in the first few turns, and then have almost no chance of winning for the rest of the game. The optional rule presented (The 'Passover' rule), which allows players to consider other players track as part of their own (for building purposes) and thereby allows them to 'pass-over' blocked areas, should solve that problem.
All in All, Dampfross is an incredible rail game. It is the promise that EuroRails didn't fulfill.