Rails, handcarts, and coal carts

Rails carry player-driven carts through the world. A handcart uses gentle manual movement. A coal cart uses a stored coal reserve and adjustable throttle. Carts are physical vehicles, not ordinary placed cube blocks, and they are not an autonomous freight network.

Build your first track

1. Make rail. Its 3×3 recipe is two outside columns of iron ingots with a stick in the center, producing 12 rails per batch.
2. Place a continuous line of neighboring rail cells on a clear, flat route. Start with a straight test track before adding corners, one-block slopes, or junctions.
3. Select a handcart or coal cart and right-click a rail to place the vehicle on it. Placing on ordinary ground does not create a usable cart. New carts initially face the game's positive-Z direction, so make your first straight route extend in that direction; the cart's appearance helps show its facing.
4. Right-click the nearby cart with an empty hand or another non-coal item to board. Mounting a coal cart resets its throttle to zero.
5. Hold W in a handcart to move gently. In a coal cart, use W to increase throttle and S to decrease it.
6. Hold Shift to dismount. The game tries nearby side positions that do not intersect the world.

A cart needs connected rail under its travel path. It stops at a gap or a track end. Rails can connect across a one-block height change, and the movement code follows eligible neighboring rail cells. Keep the route physically readable and test a slope before relying on it.

Fuel a coal cart

Craft a coal cart by placing a handcart above a kiln in the crafting grid. The handcart itself uses five iron ingots in a U shape. The item pages show both patterns.

Aim at the cart within a few blocks and right-click while holding Coal. Each click stores one coal, up to 99. Charcoal and other kiln fuels do not refuel it. Select another item to board after refueling. The HUD shows stored coal, burning reserve, speed, and a throttle bar.

Coal burns into 96 reserve units when throttle is above zero and no reserve remains. Higher throttle consumes reserve faster; it is not merely a free speed setting. The target speed is up to 14 m/s for a burning motor cart and up to 16 m/s when it is on a powered booster rail. These are target values in the movement code, not a measured promise on every track. Corners, braking, track continuity, and acceleration affect travel.

S is a lower-throttle control, not reverse. A handcart's W movement targets about 2.8 m/s. To choose among non-reversing branches at a junction, look toward the branch you want as the cart reaches the cell center. The current route chooser excludes the immediate opposite of the travel direction, so design a loop rather than expecting a simple S-key turnaround at a dead end.

Special rails

A booster rail needs a face-connected powered path from a fueled dynamo. It is not its own source of energy, and it does not make a handcart into a motor cart. Use the first circuit to test a nearby lamp, then branch the conduit to the booster rail. Because the booster conducts, check for unintended bypasses around nearby switches.

Current limits

Only the mounted cart is advanced by the player-cart movement routine. Do not expect an unattended cart to keep delivering cargo after you dismount. There is no cart cargo inventory or autonomous scheduling in this system. Carts retain their identity, position, fuel, reserve, throttle, and motor state in saves. Do not assume the boat's attack-to-recover controls also apply to carts: the current cart interaction code documents placement, refueling, boarding, and dismounting, while the boat has a separate recovery handler.

Exact crafting patterns

One item per occupied grid slot. A dot is an empty slot. Outputs and ingredient counts below come from the current crafting definitions.