(Minecraft) Making a Train Station!

Okay so as I was trying to build my castle as I was last month, I eventually ran out of rocks. I figured okay, well I could just go down into my dungeon and start digging up random rocks clearing up massive amounts of space while collecting a ton of cobblestone, but then I figured that would be boring. So instead I decided to go out into the big world and explore a little. Too be honest I haven't explored much of my world at ALL. It's far to dangerous to walk around on the surface at any time of the day. It's too easy to get lost and once the sun goes down you're screwed.. Anyways, I tried not to stray too far from my castle. Found a couple minor dungeons, but not much, so I decided to walk a little further, but this time along the beach. I figured, okay as long as I follow the water, I could always follow it back. Venturing a little further into some woods chasing after some pigs I happened to come across a nice little cave. It consisted of a fairly large amount of coal and a few blocks of iron but not much else. As I was picking at all the coal I kept hearing the sounds of spiders and zombies. During the day time? I saw in a youtube video once that some guy was following the sounds of mobs by digging towards their growls and discovered dungeons that way, so I decided to do just that. After a couple minutes of digging I managed to find a hole with like 2 zombies, 2 spiders, and a 2 skeletons. GEEZ. After killing them I hopped in and discovered a MASSIVE dungeon. It took me days to get a decent amount of torches in. It was scary because it was SOOO deep!

It's probably hard to tell here, but imagine looking down a deep hole that's super dark. Falling down (and potentially dying) would be no joke! As you can see here, I took this picture after I torched up the entire upper area of the dungeon. I have yet to finish torching the deepest parts of it. The amount of ore to mine down there is amazing! 

I figured this would be a good way to collect some extra ore while picking up large amounts of rock at the same time. So that way, once I've collected a lot I can go back to building my castle. Unfortunately for me, The sun went down and I couldn't find my way home. The number of times I died between this dungeon and my castle was ridiculous! So I torched myself a pathway from the castle to the dungeon and then built a little home at the entrance to the dungeon.

Ah shoot I just realized I forgot to save the picture I took of my new little home, oh well. Too late to go back now, I've already made a ton of changes to it.

Walking back and forth between my castle to the dungeon started to become tedious so I came up with an idea one day while I was taking a shower. I do all my thinking when I take my showers. I decided to dig an underground cave from my castle to my dungeon and then put a railroad so I could travel back and forth with ease. It was a great idea, but not an easy task! I took just about all of the iron ingots I had saved up in my chest to make the railroad tracks. I wasn't too concerned about it though because it was a worthy investment for a good project. There's a ton more iron laying around inside the dungeon! 

Here's a little sample picture (above) of the deep narrow cave leading from my castle to my newly discovered dungeon.

At first I tried using Coal-powered Minecarts just like the old school trains! I figured, okay I want to be able to transport myself and items back and forth between the dungeon and my castle, so I decided to make a ghetto train. It consisted of a coal powered cart on each end with one storage cart and one empty cart in between. The reason why I had the power minecarts on the end was to push the train in both directions. The minecarts are only capable of pushing not pulling, so technically it's not actually a train because the carts aren't attached to eachother. Unfortunately it was extremely difficult to work the train because the coal carts only went in the direction you were facing when you put in a piece of coal so I was constantly receiving strange results. Also, pushing me, the storage cart, AND a second coal cart was an extremely heavy load, so the carts actually moved literally a fraction of how fast I could walk on my own two feet. After some internet research and youtube searches, I happened to come across Bob's Minecraft Tutorials which are specifically on the mine carts. After a lot of trial and error I was able to create a back and forth system using one railroad and the help of booster carts.

Bob's helpful tutorials can be found here.

Ok so the cart on the right is my main cart (referring to the picture above). When the button on the wooden plank in front of it is pressed, the electric wiring I set up switches the direction of of the railroad to the left causing the middle cart to come around and push the main cart. Ignoring the laws of physics, in Minecraft, when two adjacent carts ride along a railroad, they instantly reach maximum speed and travel for an extremely long distance (enough to get me all the way to my dungeon), regardless of upward slopes. So taking advantage of that, Minecraft users set two carts on adjacent looping tracks causing them to constantly ride in circles resetting to maxium speed whenever the two carts pass side by side. With the help of the electronics in Minecraft, I can change the direction of of railroads, so I set an additional track next to the center loop, so whenever I push the button, the middle cart moves over to that extra track causing it to ride adjacent to my main cart which then pushes me to my dungeon. Since that extra track leads back the middle track again, the cart just goes back to continuously looping forever and ever until I push the button again. The thing about the buttons is that they only stay pressed for about one second. The after that one second, the altered direction of the track returns to its normal state allowing the middle cart (aka booster cart) to loop again.

Here's what it looks like without the booster set up revealed.

Here's the interior of the booster area where the two carts constantly loop. The red dirt on the ground to the left is the wiring I was talking about. It leads to the back of the button on the wooden plank to the left (not shown). When the the button is pressed, the wire lights up (showing that power is being put into it) and that corner track the wire is touching switches to face the other direction so the cart rides onto that extra little track to the left to push my main cart on the track to the far left.

Here's what it looks like over on the dungeon side of the track. The booster carts are on the other side of the wall.

Here's what it looks like behind the wall, as you can see the layout for the booster carts is identical to that of the ones back at my castle.

This is the best angle I could get. The wooden plank at the back is where the button is. This one was a little trickier due to the direction the track was facing. I needed it to switch to the opposite direction this time so the redstone torch (right) constantly lights that path of wiring right there on the left. Since the wiring is constantly lit, it constantly forces the track to face in that direction. You can barely see the unlit wiring behind the wooden plank. Once the button is pressed, it lights that wire which then leads to the redstone torch. When power is put into a redstone, it turns it off, thus preventing any power going into the wiring adjacent to the redstone torches. And since no more power is going into the wire, it turns off, causing the track to switch back in the opposite direction momentarily (until the button becomes unpressed). That's when the booster cart goes onto the extra track giving my main cart a nice push back home to my castle. That's the magic of redstone torches, since they constantly provide power, unique results can be obtained with multiple setups of torches.

It was a little stressful, but I had a lot of fun making these basic railroad systems. I wanted to do something similar to that of what someone on youtube did. He put a pressure plate underneath where the main cart goes and set up what he called an "NAND Gate" where the booster cart would only come when both the pressure plate AND the button was pressed. But his NAND gate went to an RS NOR Latch which was even more complicated. I tried to make it, but it was too complicated for me. I don't know anything about circuits yet. Maybe after some engineering classes? Haha, maybe I can figure it out in the future. My next goal is to mine out some nice ore from deep in the dungeon while collecting plenty of cobblestone and then continuing on my castle!