Tutorials/Train station

Compact Auto Minecart Station
Sethbling's design automatically starts the minecart and ejects the player, using a combination of redstone wiring and tripwire. Unfortunately this design uses a glitch where a person on a minecart that hits a cactus will get ejected to the side, 'phasing' through the cactus while the minecart gets collected by the hopper. In minecraft 1.6 this was fixed such that when you hit the cactus you appear right in front of it (at the place where you hit), thus leaving you on the rails and making you pick up the minecart instead of it going into the hoppers. A way to fix this is to put a rail on the hopper (NOTE)This is now outdated. In 1.8 a powered Activator Rail will dismount the player.

A slight variation that uses lava instead along with pistons is available and does not rely on any glitches, thus is considered to be safe for use in the latest versions of minecraft (1.6+). When the player arrives in a minecart, the minecart gets broken by the lava and collected by the hoppers while the player is pushed out of the exit using a glass block connected to a sticky piston. While slightly more redstone intensive than Sethbling's design (which was exceptionally simple), it does not have any problems associated with it and is thus recommended for anyone playing in 1.6+. If you are playing in 1.5.2 or below (and not planning on updating), Sethbling's design is definitely better.

And the tutorial of how to build it:

Another variation made by nmoleo64 uses a detector rail wired to a command block with the command "/kill @e[type=MinecartRideable,r=2]" to remove the minecart.

Automated Single-Car People Mover Stop
Good example of a small station: Direction changing: These are more complex and not as annoying. It is possible to minimize the amount of powered rails used. Also this can be implemented on any server, it doesn't require weeks of experimenting. This is recommended for beginners.

Automated Single-Cart Two-way Small Station (Tripwire)
An easy and effective station. The tripwire toggles the mine cart between 2 different routes, the cart either moves in circles, awaiting a passenger. When a passenger is present, tripwire will activate and cart will move in another route away from the station.

Major Multi-Car Train Station
'''NOTE: This is for people with lots of resources. If you want to do it for fun, use Too Many Items or Creative Mode. For simple quick transport, use the Single-Cart Station.'''

'''NOTE: Really complicated, requires a good knowledge of redstone wiring. BE WARNED.'''

NOTE: On 1.3 Snapshot, Many minecarts in same rails will cause linking.

Here is how to make a working train station and powered rail system. Works best for SMP.

What you will need to build a train station :


 * 200+ Redstone dust (You may need more depending how big it is).
 * 64+ Gold ingots (For powered rails depending on your decision).
 * 100+ Iron ingots (For rails and tools).
 * 1+ Stone Pressure Plate (Use wooden plates for ticket collectors shown below).
 * Lots of Wood (2 stacks or more).
 * 500+ building material (cobblestone, stone, brick, dirt, etc...)

Note: Iron and gold amounts vary on the size of the station.

Station Construction
This is one of the most important parts. Firstly, determine the size and structure of your station. You can have a massive central terminal with many platforms and on top, have ferry piers and light rail and etc. or a simple humble station with a 5-car light rail. For the test experiment, the platform only fits 3 passenger cars. You can include luggage cars in front or at the back. But to build the platform, you need a large open area. Also, determine whether your platform is a side platform or an island platform.

Platform
Now, start the boarding area. The track below the platform will ALL be powered rails. You should include extra powered rails beyond the platform for luggage cars. Before the platform, have another set of powered rails(not connected to platform track). Make a station box across from the platform with levers controlling both sets of powered rails, and place a station attendant here. Before the non-platform set of powered rails, have a room set into the side so another attendant can push the carts in an emergency.

Ticket Machines, Booths, and Turnstiles
At a ticket booth, have a person behind a glass screen with a 1x1 hole, with the stated price and destination above the hole. For a ticket turnstile, have a series of iron doors separated by walls with holes in the bottom. Below the holes, have pits that open out into a room. Below each pit, have a wooden pressure plate connected to the door(preferably under) with a person standing next to it to collect the ticket. The ticket can be anything. Another idea is to have a separate room with redstone connecting the iron door in the waiting room. In the staff room can be a lever which when pressed will open the door. Finally, have controlled water flowing through a 1 block high gap which flows into the staff room (be careful of redstone.) Now, patrons can drop "tickets" into the water and when it reaches the staff, they can open the door.

A new idea is a machine reading your ticket. Have a hole, then a water shaft. 2 blocks in, put hopper and a dropper below that. And put some space further on. Put a comparator next to the hopper above the dropper. Then put 64x9 of your money in the dropper. Put 22 coins in the hopper. Then put two redstone next to it and a repeater after that. Wire this up to an AND gate and a redstone clock. Wire this up to the dropper and another wire to a dropper which has all you tickets in. When you put your money in it goes inside the hopper. This makes the comparor goes one more block which powers the rest of circuit. You need an AND gate and a clock to make a pulse. The pulse makes the dropper lose one thing so it reverts to its one block. This makes it resettable. It will power the dropper to give you a ticket. If you have any wrong ones it will not go in the hopper and disappear after a while. Make the money from the first dropper go into lava or into a hopper chain to a chest. This is quite advanced so only attempt if good with redstone.

Keeping Maximum Speed
On the main rail, make sure that you have an activated powered rail every 7-8 blocks or, if you prefer speed over resource cost, you can use powered rails for the entire track. However, this will require much more redstone, but will definitely make sure that free carts do not slow down. If you possess vast quantities of redstone and gold, this will not be really troubling.

Profits
If well made, ticket fees will give a considerable profit on SMP, possibly giving you enough resources to build a massive subway network similar to London's Underground (The Tube), taking vast amounts of people to various places.

It is also possible to do a huge rail network with smaller, single-cart stops. Instead of using up many pickaxes while making stations, a simple single-cart network can be used.

Remember, building a structure this large will require a lot of time and effort, not to mention the resources. When building an underground network, you will find that sealing off ravines and caves becomes an additional problem. It is therefore wise to start building once you have gotten experience with redstone circuits.

Hopper Ticket System
Using hoppers, all the tickets (or other fees) thrown into the ticket machine could be pushed with a piston into a hopper on top of a chest, giving the owner the tickets back! (or extra money!)

Things you could add
If your train station gets really big, you could add stuff like these:


 * Maps in Item Frames. This can show people where they are going.
 * Shops. A small trading station where you can buy and sell things from a server user. You could also add more shops that use Villagers for trading purposes.
 * A mini restaurant. The meals could be cooked meat and the drinks could be Potions.
 * A goods station. You could use this to send storage carts to your friends.
 * Some Ender Chests for secure transport of goods, even though this cannot be used to send items to others.
 * A clock in an item frame.
 * For some added fun make mobs occasionally fall to their deaths, giving free items.

And on Pocket Edition...
As you may know, there were no rails in the Pocket Edition. (Rails were added in 0.8.0 Alpha). BUT, you can make a cool subway system with absolutely no redstone. Make a 2x3xn corridor, put fences in the middle and fly! You can make stations by just putting a door on both sides, building stairs, corridors and all that subway stuff. And if there's something you just CAN'T do, use your imagination!

Tips and tricks:
 * You can make signs in the tunnels on the fences, but remember to skip one line (try it to see why)
 * You CAN make 3x3xhow long do you want tunnels, but 2 high tunnels are more subway-like
 * Build a kiosk in busy stations and hire pigs
 * Create a map of your system