Powered Rail

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Powered Rail
ItemPoweredRail.png
ItemPoweredRailOn.png


Type

Non-Solid Block

Stackable

Yes (64)

Tool

pickaxe

First Appearance

Beta 1.5

Gravity

No

Luminance

No

Flammable

{{{flammable}}}

Data Value

27

Powered rails are a variant of standard rails that can speed up or slow down minecarts. Powered rails are operated by redstone currents, whether this comes from a redstone torch, a lever, a button, another circuit, or a detector rail. They are crafted just like normal rails with the addition of a redstone latch and can be melted down in the crucible to recover the gold and iron used to craft them.

Crafting

Name Ingredients Input » Output
Powered Rail Iron Nugget,
Shaft,
Redstone Latch
Iron Nugget
 
Iron Nugget
Grid layout Arrow (small).png
Powered Rail
GridNumbersCSS.png
Iron Nugget
Shaft
Iron Nugget
Iron Nugget
Redstone Latch
Iron Nugget

Uses

Crucible

Name Ingredients Input » Output
Iron Nugget,
Gold Nugget
Powered Rail
Powered Rail
GridNumbersCSS.png
 
 
 
Grid layout Arrow Crucible (small).png
Iron Nugget
GridNumbersCSS.png

Gold Nugget
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Behavior

Powered rails, much like redstone dust, have two possible states: on or off.

A rail that is "off" slows any passing minecart by applying a frictional force. The force is generally strong enough to bring a moving minecart to a complete stop, or to hold a minecart in place on a slope. However, if the minecart is moving fast enough, one unpowered booster rail will not be enough to stop it.

A rail in the "on" state will accelerate a minecart if any of the following is true:

  1. The minecart is already moving, in which case the cart is accelerated in the direction of motion
  2. The minecart is stationary, but one end of the powered rail is up against a solid block. In this case, the cart is accelerated in the direction that is not blocked.
  3. The minecart is stationary, but the powered rail is on a slope. The instant the powered rail is activated, the brake is released and the cart will start moving down due to gravity. As the cart is now moving, rule (1) applies and the cart is accelerated in that direction.

The second and third cases can both be used to create simple button-activated launchpads. When the powered rail is off, carts are held in place, providing a safe way to load and unload carts.

Powering

Power can be transmitted to the rail from any of the six adjacent positions (above, below, or any side) in the same ways that redstone is powered. Powered rails will also propagate power to each other if they are adjacent and part of the same track, for up to 9 blocks from the power source (one being powered directly which is propagated to 8 adjacent rails).

Because the detector rail powers adjacent rail it could be used to activate power rails only when necessary:

  • For one-way travel, place a detector rail before the powered rail
  • For two-way travel, place a detector rail on both sides of the powered rail

In practice it is far more efficient to have powered rails constantly active using other means:

  • Place a redstone torch either next to the powered rail or two blocks underneath it, or use powered redstone wiring to achieve the same effect

Momentum

Powered rails can boost a cart to a maximum speed of 8 m/s, however the cart maintains an internal "momentum" value that keeps the cart at the maximum speed of 8 m/s until the excess momentum is depleted.

A single powered rail on flat ground against a stop block gives an occupied cart enough momentum to travel 80 rail tiles on a flat surface. Putting several powered rails in a row has observable diminishing returns with each additional powered rail on how much farther a cart will travel. Maintaining maximum speed requires roughly one powered rail every 40 blocks on a straight track.

Climbing slopes impact momentum severely, thus the cart speed plummets fast. However, if there is enough surplus momentum, carts will travel up slopes with ease. Conversely, carts traveling down slopes gain momentum. When minecarts travel up a slope without having sufficient stored momentum, a powered rail is needed 1 every 4 blocks to sustain movement all the way to the top of the slope

Additional properties

Curved power rails only exist in the case where the final direction is towards the east (with the powered rail appearing in the north-south orientation), or in a T-junction where one path faces east along a north/south track. It is possible to make a one-way curved railway using power rails, but not a bi-directional one.

When placing rails, regular rails prefer to curve towards the powered rail.

A cart traveling on a powered rail that collides with an object (wall, single block, player, other cart) will reverse direction. It will not reverse direction if it collides with a translucent block, such as slabs or glass. If a track including powered rails is bordered by blocks acting as "buffers", the cart will indefinitely continue back and forth along the track. Having carts interact with each other on a short track designed this way can be used to chain multiple carts together as a "train". Once aligned, they will all move together at relatively the same speed.

How far the charge passes down adjacent rails is independent of the length of redstone wire. Even if the rails are connected to a redstone torch by 15 blocks of redstone dust, the 8 adjacent rails will still be powered normally despite the fact that they would be out of range for the torch.

Trivia

  • For comparison of speeds, walking speed is about 4 m/s, thus using powered rail to speed up will almost double your traveling speed.
  • Powered rails will always show as powered in the inventory even if destroyed and collected while it was unpowered.
  • A redstone torch or any other power supply will only power a powered rail for 9 blocks, unlike the 15-block range of regular redstone.

See also