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Hi, I have a passenger rail system set up which goes by 3 villages. At the two ends (V1 and V3) I have a simple setup with a button to start the cart moving on a powered rail. Then I have set up powered rails at various intervals with detector rails on either end. This works well to have the cart keep travelin in either direction it is going. But it depends on having a block behind the cart in V1 and V3 to set the direction the cart will go.

The problem is in Village 2, which is a train station stop between the first and last village. I'd like to have the train stop there, which i know can be done by having a poweted rail there at the stop, which doesnt have the power turned on. Then id like the passenger to push a button to eiither continue on to the last village, or go back to the first village. Same track. Obviously there can't be a block behind the cart, so how can I establish which direction the cart will go and get it moving? Seems it ought to be simple, but I can't find any info on this.

I'd really appreciate people's ideas on this -- how did you solve it? I'm no Redstone expert, and would like something at least fairly simple that I can incorporate into my simple train station design.

Thanks for any knowledge shared!
Locriana

I'm looking forward to any answers you get also.
I have the exact same situation- but my rail system goes from cave to cave with a stop at each cave. What I did was a KISS solution- have a powered rail a few blocks away in each direction from the 'stop'. Jump in the mine cart and just 'move' in the direction I want to go till I hit a powered rail and it goes from there. Not fancy, but it works.

I've always just made a short side line with a normal end and two buttons. The first button lights the launch rail and you go whichever way the tracks naturally lay. The other button lights the launch rail and sends a signal to a red stone torch under the rail junction which switches it temporarily.

From that simple set up you can expand to four or five directions from one stop.

The solution you see is to dig a 3 long 1 wide area that your track will run in, more or less lowering the rail line by 3 blocks, 1 deep. You then place a powered rail (unpowered), on the decline. This is where your carts will come to a stop, on this slope. Now if you power this rail via a button, because the cart is on a incline, it will take off instantly and won't need a block behind it.

I hope this makes since if not I can try and get a pic for you.Oh and if you add leaver here, to your station that you can access from the cart as well you can easily have the player in the cart select where he or she will go by powering/unpowering the track switcher line.

Yes, you can make a stop in the the middle of a line with two buttons; one sends you one direction, one the other.

I really wish I had a capture card right now. Let me see if I can post some pics tomorrow. What I made used four sticky pistons and 16-20 repeaters.

My old way was easier and used no pistons, but I can see where something like this would be useful.

Seems like you can do this pretty easily with an RS NOR Latch...maybe even an XOR gate... operated by 2 buttons at a terminal incline stopping point inside your middle village.

That way, instead of continuing on or going back, you always start going back from your terminal point but use a switch track to branch off to go to the next village or go back to the village you came from (or even skip the middle village entirely if you have enough redstone to run the whole distance of your track).

I can't think of a really easy way to bidirectionally control on a flat track whether you will be going forward or backward by redstone power alone.

BaconsRevenge seems to have an idea on how to do that, if so, I'd certainly like to hear it.

Edit: Actually... this looks sort of what you were looking for:

You don't need all those pistons and what not, all you need is a small 3 long 1 deep channel for the cart to stop in, 2 powered rail. If you look at the still of the video you'll see how the cart comes in and descends into a 1 deep and looks about 5 or 6 long channel. Where the cart comes in you place your first powered rail, the 2nd powered rail goes on the bottom part of the channel, and then a regular rail for it to lead back up to its normal level.

Now the way it works is the cart comes along and hits the powered rail which is unpowered and will stop on the hill, add a button that the player can press which will activate this powered rail and which the player can press without leaving the cart. Now because the cart is on a hill that is leading down when you power the rail the cart will take off instantly without needing a block behind it. When the rail becomes powered the cart will start to fall forward and take off.

A simple leaver on the other side can power/unpower the a track switcher to allow the player to choose which direction they wish to go, by adding a couple of redstone lamps with signs the player can visually see which direction the track is heading, one of the lamps obviously needs to be inverted.

So the process is that the cart comes in and stops, the player then selects where they wish to go via the leaver, and then presses the button to continue along thier way, nice and easy with only a few repeaters, a button a leaver and a few redstone torches at most.

Soon as I get a chance i'll post a stripped down pic of the striped down version.

In my own train station I use a much more advanced version that the player selects their destination, which is stored via a memory cell at each switch and substation. As the player passes each switch or station that cell is popped off and ready for use. It can store upto 8 destinations for both coming and going tracks. There is a lot more redstone involved in this setup but its fully automatic, select your destination and go. The downside to this setup is that it requires 1 track for each way, but the stations will route you automatically to the correct orientation.

Also note that you may need to do a bit of testing as if your cart is coming in at too fast a speed it will often overshoot a powered rail which is unpowered which is supposed to stop the cart but doesn't because of the increased minecart speeds. In essence when 4J increased the speed the broke alot of the mechanics for minecarts, and thus they require a bit of a work around. In this case you just need to move the previously powered rail back a few tracks.

Hope this helps.

Quote from Cire360

You don't need all those pistons and what not...

That's sort of what I was originally thinking too, but the OP seemed to specifically want a bi-directional solution (cart can go either direction on a straight track by user selection) rather than a switch track and a loopback to continue forward along the same direction of arrival.

I can't wait to dig into these ideas, thanks guys, no way to know if I can make sense of it till I try... ;-) Meanwhile I did find this solution which is really very cool. The go-forward button block has to be moved or rewired slightly to work on my Xbox (maybe because of a Redstone update?) but it's a good solution and not too complicated for this redstone noob... I used it for my middle village, and it's nice and compact and with different materials fits well for the village. It's outside the gates so hopefully the creepers won't blow it up too often!



Now I'm going to work on a station which will use part of this idea to choose to branch off to another village, coming from either direction. Oh, wait, it will be three directions, if you're coming from the branch-off village...

Great possibilities here -- I didn't realize that you could do track-switching, and actually make the track curve toward different sides of a T intersection! Almost like a train set.... :-)

I use the Compact stop and Go minecart station that Locriana has posted the link to. I find that the stations that run North and South are the easiest to build...but for me I found I needed to use power rails on both sides in the dip for the station to work correctly. Something to do with how redstone works in later updates than when the video was posted. In fact, I use 3 stations. Two north-south rails which are build exactly as Ravensignal built, but with the extra power rails in the dips, and one east-west rail that needed some figuring to get the tracks to switch correctly. With a little tinkering, I even got a dispenser in the station for minecarts.

Minecarts are alot of fun to play with, and the nice thing is that almost anyone can use them from the get go. As time passes and your knowledge of them advances you can make much more complex stations, and switches.

I refer to a station as any spot where a player can board or disembark from minecarts. A switch is a location where tracks intersect and leads to multiple locations.

Each of my stations allows the player to select their destination via button, pressing that button then sends a signal to each station and switch along the players route which each switch/station 'saves' in a memory cell. Its this signal that the station needs to remember in order to route the player to the correct destination. There are a number of problems that pop up when using this type of mechanic however. The primary one is that should user a set his destination and user b who is at a different station sets another destination and each user b arrives at a switch prior to user a then his destination can get gibbled, this is where we need to track the players progress as they travel along via detector rails, and update as needed. It sounds like a complex setup but its actually not.

In respects to minecarts in dispensers, I don't like to use this instead I use a stack system for minecarts, The nice thing with this is that 1 press of a button and the minecart arrives ready for use. When the player is finished with the cart it automatically puts itself away after the player exits the cart.

I have to admit that I haven't done much with minecarts over the last few months because the increase in speed broke my minecart storage system and I was pretty bummed out over it, I'm hoping the next update will somewhat stabilize and fix it..

Best of luck with your minecart endeavors.