Taking Control of Your Railroads with AdvancedRails
Minecraft’s minecart system is a classic piece of engineering, but anyone who has ever built a sprawling railway network knows its quirks. Powered rails give carts a boost, yet the speed you get depends heavily on whether the cart is empty, carrying a passenger, or hauling a chest. This inconsistency can turn a simple metro line into a frustrating puzzle. The AdvancedRails plugin for Bukkit servers steps in to give you total command over minecart velocity, letting you fine-tune every rail to behave exactly how you want.
What AdvancedRails Does
At its core, AdvancedRails lets you customize the speed boost that powered rails provide to different types of minecarts. By default, a passenger-filled cart gets the highest velocity, an empty one gets a moderate boost, a storage minecart lags behind, and a furnace-powered cart is the slowest. That might be fine for casual use, but when you are designing a subway, an automated storage system, or a mine elevator, these differences force you to place extra powered rails just to keep empty carts moving. Gold ingots aren’t cheap, and crafting all those rails can drain your resources. AdvancedRails solves this by allowing you to set custom velocity multipliers for each cart type, making your railroads efficient and predictable.
Understanding Velocity Multipliers
The plugin works by applying a multiplier to the base velocity a cart receives from a powered rail. A multiplier of 1 means no change—the cart behaves as it normally would. Setting a value like 1000, on the other hand, gives a massive boost, sending carts flying across your world. You can define separate multipliers for three cart categories:
- Standard – Empty minecarts and those with a passenger.
- Storage – Minecarts with a chest.
- Powered – Minecarts with a furnace (loco-carts).
This level of control means you can make all carts travel at the same high speed, or deliberately slow down storage carts for a sorting system. The only rule is that multipliers must be positive integers; zero or negative values are not allowed.
Configuration Options
AdvancedRails offers two distinct ways to set these multipliers: a global server configuration file and per-rail sign-based configuration. This flexibility lets server admins set default rules while allowing players to override them on specific rails. If you’ve ever wished you could manage your server mods as easily as a client-side modpack, you might find the foxygame.net launcher incredibly useful—it’s a modern, flexible launcher that lets you download and install plugins right from the menu, streamlining the whole experience for both server owners and players.
Global Config File
After placing the advancedRails.jar file into your server’s plugins folder, you need to create a directory called advancedRails and inside it a file named advancedRailsConfig.yml. A sample configuration is included inside the JAR. The syntax uses simple YAML:
boost: { standard: true, storage: true, powered: false }
multiply: { standard: 1000, storage: 1000, powered: 1 }
Here, the boost array toggles whether a cart type is affected at all, and the multiply array sets the actual multiplier. You can also force carts to stop on unpowered rails by adding unpowered.force_stop: true. This prevents high-velocity carts from overshooting your stations.
Per-Rail Sign Configuration
Version 0.4 introduced a powerful local configuration system. Simply place a sign on either side of a powered rail (the right side takes priority) and write instructions on it. You can use four keywords: CART for standard carts, STOR for storage carts, LOCO for furnace carts, and FORCE STOP (or FS or STOP) to halt carts on unpowered rails. For example:
CART=8
STOR=11
FORCE STOP
This sign would multiply standard cart velocity by 8, storage cart velocity by 11, and force all carts to stop on any unpowered rail. You can mix and match these instructions on a single sign, giving you granular control over every section of track.
Forcing Stops on Unpowered Rails
When you boost cart speed significantly, a single unpowered rail might not be enough to slow the cart down. AdvancedRails can force an immediate stop whenever a cart hits an unpowered rail, either through the global config (unpowered.force_stop: true) or by placing a sign with FORCE STOP next to that rail. This is perfect for station platforms where you want carts to halt precisely.
Installation and Setup
Installing AdvancedRails is straightforward for any Bukkit-compatible server (version 1.2+). Download the plugin JAR file—versions 0.4 and 0.2 are available—and place it into your server’s plugins directory. Then create the config folder and file as described. The plugin will not function without a configuration file, so be sure to set it up. If you need the sample config, you can extract it from the JAR using any archive tool.
A Note on Updates
Older versions of AdvancedRails automatically checked for updates by making a network request every time the server loaded. Starting with version 0.4, this behavior is disabled by default. You can enable automatic update checks by adding updates.allow: true to your config file. This change gives server admins more control over their network traffic and ensures no unexpected connections are made.
Building Better Railways
AdvancedRails transforms minecart mechanics from a source of mild irritation into a fully customizable tool. Whether you are running a public server with an intricate rail network or just want your private storage system to run smoothly, the ability to define exact velocity multipliers and force stops on demand saves gold, time, and frustration. The sign-based configuration makes it easy for players to tweak rails without touching server files, and the global config keeps everything manageable. If you’ve been putting off that grand railway project because of cart speed inconsistencies, this plugin is the perfect solution to get your tracks running exactly the way you imagined.