Minecart station take 2 version 1Now that powered rails have been added i thought id give making a semi automated minecart station another try
Heres what ive come up with so far:
It doesnt use any boosters, only powered rails
The carts are on slopes because powered rails are stupid and dont work when a cart is standing still on them unless theres a block behind them, or if you slope them like i did
It looks like its on the brink of failure every time you use it (see how far back those carts are on the slopes where the carts are stored) but its working reliably after 20 or so uses
It loops around on the left of the last pic like that for testing, normally those tracks would go out to another station which would be built like this one
More then 4 carts can be in storage at a time, i only used 4 for the test, but it could be 20 if you have enough space
Theres 2 main problems it has
First, theres no way to send the cart back if the person changes their mind about using it, so once a cart is at sign number 2 in the 2nd pic the person that called the minecart has to get in and go to the next station or break the minecart to put it on the slope at sign number 3 to send it back
Ill make some sort of switch track for that
The other problem is that if the person forgets to hit the button at sign number 3 the cart will be there and the next cart to come in will cause the whole thing to fail
Im going to put a detector rail before sign 3 that will activate the redstone that the button is connected to (hopefully that will work) when a cart starts to come in, that way the cart on the slope is sent back and you dont have to worry about the last button
Another smaller problem is that you have to get in and out on a slope, it doesnt effect how it works, it just doesnt look good
The only downside to building it like this is that it requires tons of gold
Empty carts only travel 8 blocks, and to make it work reliably you have to build them every 7 blocks, and sometimes even closer, so theres at least 30 gold being used just for the station
Carts with someone in them can travel 64 blocks, but they get really slow, to keep a good speed you need 1 like every 30 blocks