SlashRails
Ask any long-time Minecraft player what they want most from rails and you will hear the same answer: curves that actually look and feel like curves. SlashRails finally delivers that. It takes the gentle staircase of rails you have already placed and draws it as one continuous curve, then makes vanilla minecarts follow that curve instead of wiggling left and right at every corner. No new blocks, no special carts, no experimental toggles. Your rails stay vanilla rails.
If you have ever built a diagonal railway, you know the problem. A long, gentle run of vanilla rails comes out as a zigzag of corner rails. It looks jagged, and the ride snaps the cart's heading at every step. Resource packs make 45-degree runs look straight but leave the ride bumpy. Ride tweaks smooth the cart but leave the track looking like a staircase. Curve mods give you smooth track, but only with their own custom blocks. SlashRails fixes both halves at once, on the rails you already have.
What SlashRails Changes
The mod works on two fronts at the same time. Visually, the staircase is rendered as one continuous curve, with each rail keeping its own texture. Physically, vanilla minecarts follow the curve instead of the zigzag. Any gentle angle works, not just 45 degrees. A 1:2, 1:3 or 1:8 staircase, a wide arc, an S-bend or a full loop all smooth out nicely.
Under the hood, everything stays vanilla. Powered, detector and activator rails inside a smoothed run keep working. Where blocks sit right beside the track, such as in a tunnel or against a wall, the curve keeps to the vanilla line so carts do not scrape. Breaking any rail in a smoothed run turns that run back into ordinary rails. Remove the mod and your world is exactly as you built it.
How Much Smoother Does It Get?
The mod includes a built-in self-test that rides a cart over each track shape, first on vanilla rails and then smoothed, recording the sharpest change of direction in a single tick. The difference is dramatic.
- Staircase 1:2 — 79.5 degrees vanilla, 2.1 degrees smoothed
- Staircase 1:4 — 73.0 degrees vanilla, 1.6 degrees smoothed
- Staircase 1:8 — 79.5 degrees vanilla, 1.7 degrees smoothed
- Quarter circle, radius 16 — 78.9 degrees vanilla, 1.3 degrees smoothed
- S-bend, radius 10 — 79.8 degrees vanilla, 2.5 degrees smoothed
- Loop, radius 10 — 78.6 degrees vanilla, 1.7 degrees smoothed
In practice, that means a ride that glides instead of rattling, while the track underneath remains completely standard.
How to Use SlashRails
Getting started is quick. First, craft a Track Smoother by placing a rail, an iron ingot and a stick on a diagonal, with the stick at the bottom left. The tool also appears in the Tools and Utilities creative tab. Hold it and look at a rail, and a green line previews the curve it would make. Use it on the rail, and the whole connected run of flat rails becomes one smooth curve. Use it again on a smoothed rail to turn the run back into vanilla rails.
The golden rule is to lay your route with ordinary rails first, using a gentle staircase for a gentle curve. SlashRails follows what you built; it does not invent a new route. Already have a zigzag railway from an old world? Just walk up to it and smooth it.
Loops work too. A closed circle of rails smooths into one continuous loop, saved with the world and synced to every player on the server. If you would rather skip the manual setup entirely, the foxygame.net launcher offers one-click installation of SlashRails, keeping the add-on updated and matched to your exact game version.
How to Install SlashRails
SlashRails is needed on both the server and every client, so everyone riding the line sees the same smooth result. To install it, drop the JAR matching your Minecraft version and loader into your mods folder. Files are named with a -fabric, -neoforge or -forge suffix.
- Fabric — add Fabric API alongside the mod
- NeoForge — no extra dependencies required
- Forge — no extra dependencies required
Then simply start the game or server. Supported Minecraft versions run from 1.20.1 all the way to 26.3. Fabric covers every version in that range, NeoForge covers 1.20.4 and everything from 1.20.6 to 26.3, and Forge covers 1.20.1. The same file also runs on NeoForge 1.20.1. Sodium has been tested with 0.6.13 on 1.21.1 across both loaders, and Iris has been tested with 1.8.8 alongside a shader pack on 1.21.1 Fabric.
Configuration and Commands
On first launch, a config file is created at config/slashrails.properties. Server-side options include maxRunLength, which defaults to 512 rails and controls the longest run the Track Smoother will handle, and opOnlyTool, which restricts the tool to operators. Client-side options include toolPreview for the green preview line and debugOverlay for drawing each smoothed run's centre line.
Operators also get a small command set. Use /slashrails list to count smoothed runs and rails in the current dimension, /slashrails testtrack to build a test shape, /slashrails probe to measure the ride you are on, and /slashrails selftest to ride every test shape vanilla and smoothed and report pass or fail.
Known Limitations
SlashRails currently handles flat track only. A run stops where the track goes up or down a slope. A single sharp 90-degree corner can only be rounded a little, so it stays a tight turn. Furnace minecarts have not been tested on curves yet, though ridden and hopper minecarts have been. The mod is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license, with source and issue tracking available on GitHub.
For over a decade, players have asked for rail curves that genuinely look and ride like curves. SlashRails answers that request without replacing a single block, letting your existing worlds and builds benefit immediately. Download SlashRails for Minecraft and turn that staircase into a railway worth riding.