Mining and Redstone feel like two entirely separate elements of Minecraft’s world. One aspect focuses on resource collection, and the other on utilizing these collected resources with Minecraft farms and machines. But they’re much more similar than you might expect. A common place where they both merge is the usage of minecarts. And you can’t use minecarts properly if you don’t know how to make a powered rail in Minecraft. So, that’s where we’re stepping in with this detailed guide on powered rails. From mechanics to uses, we will cover everything in this article on Redstone powered rail. With that said, let’s get started!
To make it easier for you to understand, we are covering the mechanics, uses, and crafting recipe of powered rail in separate sections. You can use the table below to explore each of them.
- What is a Powered Rail in Minecraft?Uses of a Redstone Powered RailItems Required to Make a Powered RailMinecraft Powered Rail Crafting RecipeHow to Use a Powered Rail in MinecraftMinecraft Powered Rail vs Regular RailHow to Use Powered Rail to Stop MinecartsFrequently Asked Questions
What is a Powered Rail in Minecraft?
As the name reveals, powered rails are a block from the rail family of Minecraft. They are used to change the velocity of minecarts that pass over them. You can use the powered rail to increase and decrease the speed of minecarts. We are covering how to use them in a later section.
Naturally, you can find powered rail in the chests of mineshafts that generate underground, beneath the overworld. You can also obtain other types of rails or even minecarts within the same structure. Once placed, like other rails, you can easily break a powered rail with any tool or by hand.
You can use a powered rail in Minecraft in the following ways:
- Road: Whether it’s activated or not, the powered rail always acts as a road for minecarts to travel over.Power Boost: If the powered rail is active when the minecart passes over it, the minecart gets instantly accelerated in the direction it is moving. But it can’t increase the speed to over 8 blocks per second.Break: If a moving minecart passes over an inactive powered rail, the speed of the minecart decreases, and eventually, it stops.
Items Required to Make a Powered Rail
You need the following items to make a powered rail using Redstone in Minecraft:
To craft a stick, you have to place two wooden planks vertically next to each other in the crafting area. You can use any type of wood to make sticks. Meanwhile, we already have a guide in place to find Redstone dust in Minecraft. You can use this article to locate Redstone ore that usually generates in the caves of the overworld. When mined, the Redstone ore drops a piece of Redstone dust.
Once you have collected the materials, follow the steps below to craft a powered rail in Minecraft:
After that, put a piece of Redstone dust in the bottommost cell of the middle column. Next, put the stick in the cell right above the Redstone dust. This stick should be in the center cell of the crafting area.
And voila, you have successfully crafted a powered rail. It looks like a regular rail but with Redstone sleepers and a deep yellow-colored track.
To understand the mechanics of a powered rail as a boost for minecarts, let’s try using it with regular rails in a simple format:
Then, place a lever next to the powered rail.
Now, place a minecart on one edge of the row of rails. After that, toggle the lever to turn on the powered rail.
Then, push the minecart towards the powered rail and watch it get a speed boost. We have extended the row of rails to show the boost’s impact.
Minecraft Powered Rail vs Regular Rail
To understand the impact a powered rail makes in your Minecraft builds, let’s compare a rail road with one powered rail to another row that has no powered rails.
As you can notice, the initial push gets the minecart up to around 8 blocks. But with the help of a powered rail, you can keep powering your minecart to reach further — in the multiples of 8 blocks. It acts as a second push for the minecart.
Follow these steps to use a powered rail as a brake that stops the minecart instead of giving it a power boost:
First, place the powered rail on the rail track where you want the Minecart to stop. Make sure that the point you choose is not more than 8 blocks away from where the Minecart was powered. It automatically comes to a stop after covering almost 8 blocks.
Then, make sure that the powered rail is not active. When the rail is inactive or powered down, it is maroon in color and not glowing (on the left). There should be no Redstone signal source powering the rail.
Finally, whenever an active minecart will reach the inactive powered rail, it will automatically come to a halt. This mechanic can be used to make minecarts stop at train stations if you decide to make one in your village.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does powered rail need Redstone?
How do you make a minecart track faster in Minecraft?
