Union Pacific is a nice game with some major flaws. I liked its design, components, and general idea. The problem is with the execution, particularly the *extreme* random element of the dividend payoffs. There are four, and the game ends with the fourth. They are the only way to score points (money) in the game, and nothing you do on other turns counts. The payoffs occur when "Dividend" cards are drawn during the course of working through a large, shuffled deck of cards.

The best analogy would be to imagine El Grande played for 60 turns, each turn marked by the drawing of a chit from a cup, with four different chits marking scoring rounds. Some have described El Grande as a "dry” game because it is prone to micro-analysis by those planning several turns ahead for a scoring round. Union Pacific is the complete opposite: unless you're a Black Jack master card-counter (and even then...), it doesn't really pay to think much at all, since it's a total crapshoot as to when a Dividend card will appear.

That's not to say don't-buy-the-game. It has a very nice look-and-feel, and I think that with a bit of thinking you could come up with some reasonable house rules or variants to make it a much better game.