RuleSage cited table rulings
← Ticket to Ride

You asked

Can a locomotive card be spent as an ordinary coloured card when claiming a grey route, or only on ferries?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ticket to Ridebg-9209-en-1e

Locomotives are multi-colored and act as a wild card that can be part of any set of cards when claiming a route.[1] Gray colored routes can be claimed using a set of cards of any one color.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook · p.3 · Train Car Cards
[2] RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook · p.3 · Claiming Routes

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 170 ms · ask 1198 ms · total 1372 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 1372 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "There are 8 types of regular Train Car cards, plus Locomotive cars. The colors of each type of Train Car card match various routes between cities on the board - Purple, Blue, Orange, White, Green, Yellow, Black, and Red. Locomotives are Multi-colored and act as a wild card that can be part of any se", "headingPath": "Train Car Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Draw Train Car Cards The player may draw 2 Train Car cards. He may take any one of the face-up cards or he may draw the top card from the deck (this is a blind draw). If he draws a face up card, he immediately turns a replacement card face-up from the deck. He then draws his second card, either from", "headingPath": "The Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "To claim a route, a player must play a set of cards equal to the number of spaces in the route. A set of cards must be of the same type. Most routes require a specific type of set. For example a Blue route must be claimed using blue-colored Passenger Car cards. Some routes - those that are Gray colo", "headingPath": "Claiming Routes", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "◆ 1 Board map of North American train routes ◆ 240 Colored Train Cars (45 each in Blue, Red, Green, Yellow and Black, plus some extra replacement cars in each color) ◆ 144 Illustrated cards: 110 Train Car cards (12 each of Box, Passenger, Tanker, Reefer, Freight, Hopper, Coal, and Caboose cars, plus", "headingPath": "Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Place the board map in the center of the table. Each player takes a set of 45 Colored Train Cars along with its matching Scoring Marker. Each player places his Scoring Marker on Start ❶ on the Scoring Track running along the map's border. Throughout the game, each time a player scores points, he wil", "headingPath": "Setting up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A player can use his turn to draw more Destination Ticket cards. To do so, he draws 3 new cards from the top of the Destination Ticket Deck. He must keep at least one of the cards, but may also keep two or all three if he chooses. If there are less than 3 Destination Tickets left in the deck, the pl", "headingPath": "Drawing Destination Ticket Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Players should have already accounted for the points earned as they completed different routes. To make sure no mistakes were made, you may want to re-count the points for each player's routes. Players should then reveal all their Destination Tickets and add (or subtract) the value of their Destinat", "headingPath": "Calculating Scores", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The player who is the most experienced traveler goes first. Play then proceeds clockwise around the table, each player taking one turn at a time until the game ends. On his turn, a player must perform one (and only one) of the following three actions: 30 Destination Ticket cards 1 Longest Continuous", "headingPath": "The Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Train Car Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Claiming Routes", "sharpsignalDocId": 85}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 85 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 85 boosted
answered-before recall
this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence
passed — letter density 0.94231 of 156 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 20, 2026 21:36 UTC

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Train Car Cards p.3 0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) The Game Turn p.3 0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Claiming Routes p.3 0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Components p.2 0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Setting up the Game p.2 0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Drawing Destination Ticket Cards p.4 0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Calculating Scores p.4 0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) The Game Turn p.2 0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) 300

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 14 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Train Car Cards p.3 #1 0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#2 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) The Game Turn p.3 #2 0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#3 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Route Scoring Table p.4 #13 0.013699 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#4 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Calculating Scores p.4 #7 0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#5 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Game End p.4 #11 0.014085 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Object of the Game p.2 #9 0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one)) vector the re-ranker chose it
#7 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Components p.2 #4 0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Claiming Routes p.3 #3 0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Train Car Cards p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Ticket to Ride — Rulebook (corpus doc 85) Claiming Routes p.3 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 170 ms · first delta 1050 ms · total 1372 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 0 ms · retrieval 170 ms · ask 1198 ms · gateway work 1372 ms · total 1372 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
1700
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
48
tok/sec
186.8 tok/sec — 48 output tokens in 0.257 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 23h, checked 9s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask)
node1
stream path
streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog
first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture
both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 16), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.