Rails and minecarts are a good way to transport both yourself and your loot between places. Whether it’s from your mine to your base, or from base to base. It’s quick, easy, and you get to enjoy a nice view.
Though, you can use rails for more than just regular transport. Games are about fun after all!
If you have rails to spare you can go ahead and have fun learning how to build your very own rollercoaster in Minecraft.
How to Get Rails in Minecraft
Rails and minecarts can actually be found in the overworld of Minecraft.
Aside from cave biomes, there’s a chance of running across abandoned mineshafts inside caves. These mineshafts are always a great find. They are always chuck full of precious loot, some of which you can’t find elsewhere.
And some of this loot is exactly the things you might be needing for your rollercoaster. Rails and minecarts with chests can be found in an abundance in mineshafts.
They will contain loot, but you can also break them and take them with you.
A fair warning, of course, is that abandoned mineshafts have their whole set of hostile Mobs and they can be quite a maze. It’s easy to get lost or overwhelmed by mobs like spiders and cave spiders.
Minecraft Rails Recipe
- 6 Iron Ingots
- 1 Stick
With this you can craft 16 rails.
If you are not feeling up for a dangerous adventure into abandoned mineshafts you can craft your rails instead. Keep in mind that to craft them you might need quite a bit of material in some cases and there’s different kinds of rails to craft.
Other types of rails are: activator rails, detector rails, and powered rails. All of these work with redstone.
For our rollercoaster we won’t be using activator or detector rails, because they won’t be of much use on the ride. They have other uses when it comes to using and building with redstone, however.
Minecraft Powered Rail Recipe
- 6 Gold Ingots
- 1 Stick
- 1 Redstone Dust
The ones we’ll be using the most will be powered rails, which have a relatively simple recipe. You will need 6 gold ingots, a stick, and redstone dust, arranged in the pattern as shown on the image below.
Some of the ore materials you will be using in these recipes can be found in different places within caves. It’s good to know how Ore levels work in Minecraft so that you can find them easily.
Powered rails will be important for our build, because when powered with redstone they push the minecart forward and accelerate its speed. This will make our minecart go fast on the ride and keep it from stopping.
Do remember that you will need redstone torches or even whole redstone blocks to power them.
Mincraft Minecart Recipe
- 5 Iron Ingots
Your rollercoaster will be nothing without the minecart. A minecart is a vehicle, similar to a boat, which can be placed and driven on rails.
Additionally they may be equipped with things such as a furnace, TNT, or a chest to ease your mining endeavors, but for our rollercoaster this won’t be necessary.
For the player the Minecart functions the same as a Boat does, both for entering and exiting it, as well as mining it to remove it off of rails.
How to Build a Rollercoaster in Minecraft
Building with rails is fairly easy and riding them is quite fun. Rails can only be connected one way and they can not, sadly, split off to make intersections or anything of the sort.
They can also be made to climb up blocks to reach heights. This means we can make some pretty high up and steep rides if we want. The important thing to remember, though, is that the rails will be destroyed unless resting on a solid block.
Sadly though, we cannot make our rollercoaster have vertical loops, but I’ll show you how to still make a fun ride nonetheless.
To start off your rollercoaster use regular rails on the ground or a small platform. This will be the start of the ride as well as where you get in and out of your Minecart. Then, like with every good rollercoaster, we want to start by ascending.
This is where we will use the powered rails and redstone torches to push the cart up.
I want to make this rollercoaster fairly tall, but I also don’t wish for the cart to just zoom up to the top. So, I put a powered rail down after every 2 or so blocks.
It’s a trial and error process in figuring out when you need the powered rails and when not. The cart will be affected both by gravity and how hard its pushed.
Make sure to have a minecart on hand and test the ride over and over again.
Once at the top I leave a bit of space for the Minecart to roll forward, but also slow down before reaching the drop. This is a little tricky, since it involves timing and just seeing how far the cart will roll without being powered.
Once I have made sure that the cart does in fact reach the drop slowly, I work on all the fun and fast bits of the ride.
The drop I will line with powered rails so that the cart goes as fast as it can. The rest of the ride will alternate between normal and powered rails. I don’t want the Cart to go too fast and the ride to end too soon.
Using the rails mechanic of being able to curve and climb I make some spiraling towers and simply alternate between drops and climbs.
Make it as long and wild as you wish and play around to your hearts content!
