The Ultimate Minecraft 1.20 Minecart & Rail Guide 

Mojang had definitely missed the opportunity for chains to be used to connect minecarts together when they are added in the Nether update. Whether with chains, leads, or something else, being able to connect minecarts together to form trains can be a major advantage, especially considering that it will finally make the Minecart with Furnace useful for once, taking the role as the locomotive of the train.

minecarts are the most underrated game mechanic in minecraft. i have a carpet duper connected to my rail network that supplies my castle with unlimited fuel by transporting chest carts to the different systems i have but also turned my skele farm into a mini game by collecting skeles at random times and sending them along a platform near by so i can practice my archery

I have a huge rail system in my world. I always carry a minecart with me, because I will never get lost. It's so long that it takes a day and night cycle to ride the whole thing. From mesas to snowy mountains to jungles, it goes through it.

i like how his biggest con of detector rails is that they blow up TNT, implying he normally decorates his railways with tnt along the whole thing

I think that minecarts/rails are a part of the game that have kinda of been neglected by Mojang, and could use an update. Here's some of my ideas: - minecarts could be linked together using chains or leads to form minecart trains. - new ways to speed up minecarts: powered rails could be amplified depending on what they are powered with, minecarts travel a few blocks faster on rails placed on gravel, or (this is crazy one) a new enchantment that can only be applied to minecarts and boats using the anvil that gives them a permanent speed effect. - new minecart variants: with items like cauldrons, dispensers, droppers, redsone blocks, jukeboxes, and armor stands. Some of these would have uses, but some are for fun. - since a massive rail system can be expensive (and if you don't have any gold/iron farms and if you don't want to use a duper), all rail types could be purchased from tool/weapon smiths as tier 2 trades (they would only sell you one type of rails a time so you would have to refresh the trades).

One thing to note with detector rails: when ejecting a mob, it will “prefer” ejecting them to the right of the direction of travel

A few points I didn't hear mentioned: (1) A minecart goes much further with you or a mob in it. You want powered rails quite close together (say, every 5 blocks) if there will be empty minecarts running the track, but if the track is for occupied minecarts only then you can put powered rails up to 40 blocks apart (if flat), although I usually go with 32 blocks so that you don't slow down too much, or 20 blocks if I want to keep going as fast as possible. (2) Although mobs will not cross tracks, they can still drop onto the track from above. For this reason, make sure there are no higher blocks next to the track, even just one block high. Once the mob falls onto the track it will generally stay there, or walk along the track, which is super annoying. Creepers can still stand next to the track and explode when you go past - they probably won't damage you if you're going fast enough, but they will destroy the track. Overland rails are fun but really tricky in survival. You can put fences alongside them, and lit torches to stop mobs spawning near, although I find elevating the railway is the best option (except it limits where you can get in or out). (3) If you want to hide the power source for your powered rails, just dig two blocks down next to the rail, dig out the block under the block the rail sits on and then put a redstone torch there, so it is directly under the block the rail is on. (4) A good use of a detector rail and activator rail is to have the activator eject you from the minecart when you reach then end of the track. It's not really necessary but it's fun if you use your rail network to travel around.

This is crazy! I was just planning on making a more efficient method of getting villagers from a savanna village up to a skybase I have with my friend. Thank you so much for making this content, seriously, I have made all of your mini farms. I genuinely adore your channel. Please keep it up as long as you are happy doing it. Best, Leo

I have read through minecarts on the wiki. the best distance for power rails is 38 blocks. you get almost the full speed while using very few powered rails. only empty minecarts can't go on that track, because they have little weight they will lose movement speed alot faster. The rail duper actually still works. i have tested it. Great tutorial tyvm

Detector rail's are super worthwhile for combining with that direction-switching feature of normal tracks for creating one-way minecart loops. For traditional mining assistance carts (i.e., shipping mined stuff back to the surface in quantities larger than your inventory) it's nice to have a cyclical "minecart pool" of personal and chest carts that use a detector rail to direct them into a closed loop that can only be exited with a lever switch. This way you can send all carts in the pool in one direction at once, to be collected into another circular pool.

I have literally never seen a video of yours that has not been INSANELY helpful and informative. Thank you!!!!

Back in Beta, I remember making a T rail junction that would allow you to choose multiple destinations depending on if you pushed button A or B at the intersection, then speed you to the next destination/junction. Fun stuff.

currently building a subway system in my world this video is great about explaining in depth on using railways. great work!

Love the detail and quality of your videos, please keep it up!

Perfect timing!!! Thank you so much you upload everything at just the right time thank you for everything

This is exactly the information I needed to get my freight line working. Thanks!

Thank you for the info! Also the duplicator was a lot of fun to gather materials for and make, even if it doesn’t work for me. Thank you for the great vid!

I really love your comprehensive and clear tutorials EyecraftMC! Bang on~ I was really hoping to see the mechanics of portals with railcarts. Any plans of a video like that?

Been waiting a while for this, thank you ❤

I have my family realmand my goal had been to make a rail to the wolds border in a straing line, stoping along the way to mine for reasorces and upgrading local villages in the area. this was super helpful i will forever be thankful.

Just what I needed! TYSM!

thank you!! finally someone explains all these rails!! i couldn't figure out the activator or detector rails!

Detector rail combined with a comparator can sense the hopper/chest minecart fullness.

I have wanted this video for so long!!! Eyecraft ❤️

Great tutorial! Gonna use this as a cheat sheet when I go to build my villager breeding system and trading hall

I couldn't ask for more from this guide. Also, very smooth narrating voice. Really enjoyed it.

I've been waiting for this one. Thanks Eye for being the best mc creator!

This is useful stuff. I knew basics of minecart systems. Hope i can do some in bedrock. Going to test it. Thanks!

This is perfect. Answered every question i had and then some!

I really love Minecarts! Great Guide. There are so many hidden things about minecarts. 😁

i might sound dumb but... they are my favourite feature, i'm in a server and the most anticipated proyect it's conecting the teams with rails and minecarts, this is level of atention to minecarts makes me very happy. thank you.

Yeahhhh finally a guide for minecart and rail Thank u so much Ur content always help me

Awesome guide! Thanks :D

I love your videos. Fully in- depth

Your rail track is amazing, wow! Also i didnt know that activator rails can get people off minecarts, i've built a big railway with my team on a server and it was a bit annoying to make it stop near builds without this knowledge. Thanks!

Great Basic Tips that will lead to an impressive build. Thank you so much.

so clear and concise!!! thank u sm for this

The rail duplication does not work for me. Playing on bedrock edition on my pc.

..i literally started building a tunnel from my base to a distant village two days ago and started trying to figure out for example how many powered rails I need for smooth sailing and etc., the timing could be even better

An activator rail can be used to put a player or mob in a very precise location, specifically at the exact center of a block. I've seen technical players use this in their projects

I was gonna see if you had a video about this today..posted an hour ago. Thanks!

What’s good man I enjoy your videos :D

I love all your content!

If there is a player or mob in the mine cart, you can actually put a powered rail every 34th rail. So you can actually lay out your track in a 33 nornal rails and 1 powered rail pattern after at least 3 powered rails to get up to speed

Fantastic concise and helpful video

ALL I WANT IS MINECARTS TO BE FASTER

I used to use rails for travel quite a lot, but sadly connected nether portals are always faster. "Sadly", because rails are fun to ride on 😄

I love how I learned that you’re moral compass is malleable when it comes to duplicating powered rails. 👏🏼

ooh thats a great topics for beginers well done

A thing worth mentioning is you can use a comparator along with detector rail to read contents of a chest or hopper minecart

YAYYYYYY!!!!! The video I was hoping for!!! Thanks @Eyecraftmc this was excellent, all the pertinent info, that's the most information in any video I've seen on minecraft regarding the detector rail... super handy, thanks so much! Also, are we doing rail duping on the server?

Cool You are my favourite guide!

I just started building a metro system in my world, and this video drops. Thanks so much!!

Niceone thanks fellah

The way you explain information and show it. I enjoy your videos. Thank you for the content you make. Been playing MineCraft for 3months on Bedrock survival mode and don’t use cheats for Achievements. Very close to platinum with your videos as a resource.

Great video

This was really helpful

The rail farm no longer works

A few years ago I tried to build a perfect station that will be cheap and easy to build, and the key thing that it should deal with chest minecarts, so it won't break them. And it should provide at least 3 different options to travel (back, forward and alternative forward). After 100+ hours of experimenting I gave up. Minecarts are very complex things! Right next to redstone itself. I tried to google if someone has built such a station and I didn't find any...

I'm surprised that players are just realizing the amazement of minecarts. I thought this was a huge craze back when rollercoasters were a thing

Perfectly timed! SMP is updating

The og back at it again 😉

Thanks a lot for all your tutoria videos and also as a awesome Minecraft teacher for us 🤩🤩 Lots of love from India and thank you again for this awesome content ❤️❤️🤩🤩

Awesome!

A tutorial i forgot i needed. I have only used normal rails and the powered rail for the past idk 13 years

I’ve made many thousand rails. I use them to travel underground in 3x3 tunnels to places like the end portal room, ancient cities etc. I don’t deviate from my straight path using glass blocks to bridge over caves and stuff. Very satisfying to accomplish in survival and gives you a chance to take a break while you wait to get to your destinations.... ancient city is around 5500 blocks away. 1 powered rail with a Redstone Block underneath every 32 normal rails keeps you going and exclusively powered rails when going uphill. Edit: Hmmmm, duplication. Interesting.

Hi I don't understand much english but your videos are more understandable than many german ones. I play minecraft not long and it would be great if you show me the easiest way how to make a minecart continue after climbing out of a water elevator. thank you and greetings from germany.

Clean 😎👍

Can you do a sorting system explained video? Show an example of one that doesn't use water (for things such as gold farms in the nether). That would be awesome!

Thank you bro ❤️

If you are on bedrock, trying to make multiple parallel powered tracks right next to each other. Make sure you orient the build so the rail are going in the default direction. Because they will fight you to be in the default direction and no one on the entire internet has a solution for this

you can make a video of your past survival live streams because it is way too long to watch the whole series !! btw love your videos

If you plan on riding in the carts, the most efficient way is to place 3 powered rails after 32 regular rails. Only works with player/entity and not with empty carts.

first, great content man, amazing youtuber

Great tutorial though. Man, seeing the max speed of modern minecarts make me really miss the high speed minecart booster trick in the early Beta days for extreme roller coaster speeds, and I find it hilarious even after so many years they still haven't figured out what to do with the Minecart with Furnance to make it useful.

Just watching a Eyecraftmc video, then get a notification of a Eyecraftmc upload.

Love this video

Sir you got my attention and my subscription

Googling Minecart redstone and find the perfect video that was I my posted 3 hours ago. Thanks

THANK YOU!

thank you! my rail system is terrible but now i shall fix!

I made a rail system between a village and my base. However, I did NOT plan it at all and it's a horribly ugly squiggly random mess lol The desert village is located diagonally away and I wanted to make a direct line to it. But I have no idea how to make pretty curves in minecraft or have patience to carefully lay it out. The travel time is about a minute long and it's raised up like a monorail so it actually is a really cool scenic ride. I more recently discovered another plains village but this village connects by water; coast to coast so I just use boats to get back and forth. I plan to make a "river road" eventually. Thinking a path of greenery and lights

Regarding the rail, duplication, I have this set up the same way, and the piston just pushes the slime, rails, and the other observer back-and-forth. The piston never separates from the slime block like yours does. Advice??

Hi and thanks for the video. My question is about the rail duplicator. For some reason, mine doesn't work. I'm playing Bedrock 1.19, survival mode. The sticky piston doesn't seem to move as fast as yours and also it consistently stays in contact with the slime. In your video, it looks like the sticky piston pushes the slime away. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I know this is late, but a good method to change rail direction is using an observer pointed on a dirt block with a piston above it, so when you right click with a shovel, it will detect the change, send two pulses as all observers do, the piston will reset the dirt block to be used again, use repeater to prolong the signal. This means that the rail can reset right after you pass it and is very easy to use in high-speed.

Best video ever!!!!

Me who few days ago got excited to learn about railsin Minecraft, confusing but fun :D

I cannot express how thankful I am for the rail duplication dupe it has made my dream of connecting nearby villages through rail network a reality

I randomly had an urge to make a rollercoaster in minecraft again so here I am watching this video

One thing you left out is a 4 way junction. I have a system where I want to go from location A, I want to go to B or C often. however, I have location D that will only ever go to C (i'll never need to from from A to D, B to D or C to D). Unfortunately, the moment I put a 4th rail at the intersection, the rail switcher stops working.

I can’t wait for the next update, they planned to make minecarts faster, but I’m hoping they do more than that. I would love a train

I want a video showing off your minecart rail system.

Extremely useful in early to mid game when elytra and sulker box are still unobtainium.

Goat 🐐

Haven't watched it yet but it's happened to me now . I was just considering looking for a video on minecarts and this appears .

You know what would be tight. Imagine being able to use something similar to redstone, but it does the opposite. (Maybe like an orangish stone called ether stone or something. Would glow similar color to redstone). So if you were to put three sticky Pistons underground for a secret door. You could still use a redstone torch, block to place torch on and the ether/redstone dust. When you turn the lever on(activate mode), it would provide power to the redstone, but it would turn off the power to the piston connected to the (ether stone). So the 2 redstone dust would turn off the redstone torches but the ether dust would activate the torch, due to it not having a power source "on" telling it to turn the redstone torch off. You could also possibly just make an ether torch that would do the opposite with redstone dust going into it. That way you wouldn't have to use a bunch of extra torches,dust, and repeaters. That one ether torch or dust will invert it for you. You could also have a third type of dust. You could use redstone, gold nuggets and ender pearl(or whatever) to make a certain dust , let's say, ender dust. Reasoning: 1) ender pearl allows you to travel wherever it's thrown(wireless) 2) gold is conductive 3) redstone dust cause it's dust lol So this type of dust would not connect with itself but could connect with others (redstone/ether dust). Reason being is because you would only need 2 ender dust to activate something. So imagine you place a lever in a (control building) and place another single dust at a piston 70 blocks away. It would activate it. The reason it wouldn't connect to itself is simple. Due to you only needing one anyways, you could place them side by side (like a staircase) and close that gap without (disconnecting) the connection between the two ender dust. Would make it a lot easier to close off stuff on the surface especially without having to put something over or around it to cover it up. Connecting ender dust to redstone or ether stone would give you what you need for your creation. I'd say 100 block radius for the ender dust would be plenty. 100 due to the fact that some like to make huge buildings that would require some distance. You could still activate traps from a distance

very good video

Mojang really needs to give minecarts a serious update. Necessary fixes: - Maximum speed needs to be increased - Linked minecarts using chains so furnace cart can be a useful engine - Alternative ways to fund the rails like a merchant trade - Improved mechanics with slime block and tnt that allows for better vertical launching or speed boost for veterans - Make cross rails and detector mechanics that actually work - Give us a better way to get mobs into the minecart, I can understand not giving us that for boats, but minecarts are the intended way to transport mobs Currently, it makes more sense to use ice and a boat to get around because of how expensive, slow, and tedious it is to use minecarts. That ain't right!

Wow, that is a LOT of a powered rails. I use one every 32 unpowered rails on flat ground. 32 isn't meta, but it's convenient as it's half a stack of rails, which makes counting easy. I use one powered rail for each increase in height. Just for style, I go no less than 8 level rails for each height increase; adds a tiniy bit of realism. Since minecarts slow down a lot on corners, I use a powered rail on each side of a corner. If two curves are close together, I only put the powered rails on each side of the set of two corners. I really wish minecarts would load chunks, as that would allow long-distance automated transportation. If you're into making things look pretty, put down a layer of gravel under your railroad- err, minecart- tracks for that real world aesthetic.

Mojang needs to make minecarts significantly faster to make them a worthwhile player transportation system