Minecart

Minecarts are rideable objects placed on rails that are used to carry items, mobs, and the player. They have practical uses, as they can cover long distances much faster than walking. Additionally, they are used for recreation - intricate roller coasters have been created through clever track placement and design.

Minecarts are placed in the same manner as other blocks; however, they can only be created on top of minecart track. Once placed, they may be derailed by pushing them off of the end of the track. Unlike boats, minecarts are not buoyant, and thus cannot be used for water elevators.

Crafting
Minecarts can be crafted via the following formula:

Minecarts are non-stackable.

Once placed, minecarts can be destroyed and reverted to a carriable item, even while being ridden (though this will cause the player to fall through the block below). Stone (or better) swords revert minecarts in one hit with no decrease in durability, whereas steel picks require two hits. Two arrows suffice, but they will be lost just as if used on a mob.

Trivia

 * Minecarts appear to float above the track, as their model has no wheels.
 * When placing a minecart on a track in SMP, touching the minecart at all will cause it to glitch, creating a solid, unmovable minecart, and a ghostly cart that seems to move freely. After a short while, the game will crash. (This issue has been fixed as of Nov 10, 2010 in Minecraft Alpha v1.2.2 and partially fixed in Minecraft Server 0.2.4. The Minecraft Server Update 0.2.5 seemed to give the ability to now destroy minecarts with any tool, although the minecart is not animated when being hit.)
 * Pigs can be ridden while in Minecarts, although a saddle is needed.
 * Small slimes may be used to power a minecart by hitting it from behind. This strategy works fairly well, and can be used to power long minecart trains.

Basic
Minecarts can be ridden by right-clicking them. Once inside, the player cannot move, so an external impulse (a powered minecart or booster) is required to set the cart in motion. It is possible to push the minecart manually and then jump in.

Players can exit the minecart by right clicking it, however if there is only one block of headroom above the cart the player will take half a heart of damage as he bangs his head on the ceiling. It is possible to interact with the environment while riding a cart, such as shooting a bow at enemies or laying down track in front of the minecart while it is moving.

After rolling off of the end of a track, a minecart can be pushed around on open blocks. If a minecart is pushed onto or falls onto tracks, it will "snap" to those tracks. When riding a falling minecart, landing will deal no damage.

A minecart will stop when it encounters a dropped item.

If an animal is hit or pushed into a rideable minecart, they will ride it. They will escape if the player right clicks to ride it themselves (pushing out the animal) or if the cart is destroyed. They may also exit after a while.

Energy Conservation
The minecart physics have been noted to be very unrealistic. Once pushed downhill a minecart will gain speed at an increasing rate until it reaches a cap. It also moves significantly faster/farther when ridden by a player rather than when pushed empty. An example of this is riding a minecart after being pushed up/down a slope of one block after which it will travel around an amazing 78 blocks, though very slowly by the end. A player can rapidly re-enter the cart or add boosters on tracks to increase speed.

Although the minecart has a maximum speed (8 m/s, 1 block = 1 meter)(8 m/s = 17.89 mph), it does not appear to have a maximum energy. One can create a slope upwards of a tested 60 blocks, and achieve further and further travel distances.

One unit of energy could be defined as the energy gained by a cart going down a one block slope, and lost by a cart when it goes up a one block slope. If a 45 degree downward slope is connected directly into an upward slope, an initial height of 60 blocks will result in a final height of 40 blocks, a loss of 20 units of energy. But if 20 sections of flat track are inserted between the slopes, the final height will be 35. This implies that one unit of energy is lost for every 4 sections of horizontal track traveled with an initial stored energy of between 60 and 40. At much lower speeds, much less energy is lost, implying that the energy lost is a percentage of the cart's current energy. The above gives about 0.5% energy loss per section of track. One implication of this is that more energy lost when the cart has more energy, so a gradual slope should allow you to travel much farther distances than a steep slope followed by a long flat section.

Anything in the way of the minecart will take it to a dead stop, including: blocks, items, mobs, and moving off of minecart tracks. (However, it seems to keep a small part when it falls immediately after coming off the tracks.) When a mob touches a minecart they affect it in the same way a player would, i.e. minecarts in motion bounce away from mobs in the way of its motion and mobs that move up against a still cart will set it in motion.

Boosters
Minecarts can act very strangely when they are next to each other - they accelerate rapidly. This effect is used to create boosters.

'Note that as of the 1.2_01 update, certain boosters may not cause minecarts to travel as far. This can be fixed by placing a double booster.'

Collision
Minecarts seems to have about the same size as a block; 1x1. Because of this, a ladder or door will prevent it from falling down a 1x1 hole. This can be utilized to make minecart dispensers, by stacking carts on top of each other and dispensing them with the help of a booster. A single cart dispenser using a door can also be made by using a ladder to block the cart from falling off the door.

Additionally, you can transport carts along 1 block wide water streams without the minecarts falling by placing ladders underneath. By alternating the ladders, items can still fall through. Because streams carry minecarts at a very slow rate, a trap can be made where anyone sitting in a cart will be suffocated in a block directly above the stream, and their items can be collected below.

Carts on minecart tracks will also ignore collision in certain situations.

Special Minecarts
There are currently two types of special minecarts:
 * Powered Minecart - A self-propelled minecart that is powered by fuel.
 * Storage Minecart - A minecart that can store items like a standard chest.

Minecart Trains


After Friday July 30's Minecart update, creating Minecart trains became a much simpler solution to transporting goods. To create a train, start with a fairly short length of straight track with an open ending on one side. Put a Powered Minecart on the side nearest the open end, and then add Storage Minecarts or ridable Minecarts along the rest of the track. Then, turn on your Powered Minecart. It will push the other Minecarts as if it were a Minecart Train. Placing an additional Powered Minecart on the other end will allow you to make a two-way train, as minecarts currently only push other carts, not pull.

Glitches

 * Prior to Alpha version 1.2.2, destroying a minecart while riding in said minecart would cause the player to fall through the block below the minecart. This could be used to make secret entrances into bases, though entry in this way caused the loss of half a heart due to a short moment of suffocation. (This bug was apparently fixed, but has since resurfaced in Beta version 1.1_02)
 * Detonating TNT in close proximity to a minecart, even when doing so with the TNT submerged in water (such as a cannon), will often cause the minecart to disintegrate into numerous dropped minecarts.
 * Minecarts can catch on fire, but the mob or player inside the minecart will not catch on fire from a minecart. (Pictured)
 * Riding a minecart into the portal to the Nether will cause the player to become stuck in the Nether's ceiling until they log out of the world.