How to Make Powered Rail in Minecraft

Mining and using redstone feel like two entirely separate elements of Minecraft’s world. But they’re much more similar than you might expect. A common place where they both merge is the usage of minecarts. To use this entity, you’ll need different types of rails. So, we’re bringing you this detailed guide on powered rails. From mechanics to uses, we will cover everything in this article on redstone powered rail in Minecraft. With that said, let’s get started!

Items Required to Make a Powered Rail

You need the following items to make a powered rail using redstone in Minecraft:

• 6 Gold Ingots
• 1 Stick
• 1 Redstone Dust
• Crafting Table

To craft a stick, you have to place two wooden planks vertically next to each other in the crafting area. You can use any type of wood to make sticks. Meanwhile, we already have a guide in place to find redstone dust in Minecraft. Locate redstone ore that usually generates in the caves of the Overworld. When mined, the redstone ore drops a piece of redstone dust.

Similarly, you can get gold ingots by mining gold ore and then smelting it in a furnace or blast furnace. To find gold ores, use our Minecraft ore distribution guide. A simple life hack is exploring badlands that have the most amount of gold and mineshafts.

How to Craft a Powered Rail in Minecraft

Once you have collected the materials, follow the crafting recipe below to make a powered rail:

• First, place gold ingots on both side columns of the crafting area. The sides of all three rows should be completely filled, leaving the middle column empty.

• After that, put a piece of redstone dust in the bottommost cell of the middle column.
• Next, put the stick in the cell right above the redstone dust. This stick should be in the center cell of the crafting area.

And voila, you have successfully crafted a powered rail. It looks like a regular rail but with Redstone sleepers and a deep yellow-colored track.

How to Use a Powered Rail in Minecraft

You can use a powered rail in the following ways:

• Road: Whether it’s activated or not, the powered rail always acts as a road for minecarts to travel over.
• Power Boost: If the powered rail is active when the minecart passes over it, the minecart gets instantly accelerated in the direction it is moving. But it can’t increase the speed to over 8 blocks per second.
• Break: If a moving minecart passes over an inactive powered rail, the speed of the minecart decreases, and eventually, it stops.

To understand the mechanics of a powered rail as a boost for minecarts in Minecraft, let’s try using it with regular rails in a simple format:

• First, place a powered rail on the ground with three regular rails on either side (see image below). All of these rails should be facing in the same direction.

• Then, place a lever next to the powered rail.
• Now, place a minecart on one edge of the row of rails. After that, toggle the lever to turn on the powered rail.

• Then, push the minecart towards the powered rail and watch it get a speed boost. We have extended the row of rails to show the boost’s impact.

Minecraft Powered Rail vs Regular Rail

To understand the impact a powered rail makes in your builds, let’s compare a rail road with one powered rail to another row that has no powered rails.

As you can notice, the initial push gets the minecart up to around 8 blocks. But with the help of a powered rail, you can keep powering your minecart to reach further — in the multiples of 8 blocks. It acts as a second push for the minecart.

How to Use Powered Rail to Stop Minecarts

Follow these steps to use a powered rail as a brake that stops the minecart instead of giving it a power boost:

• First, place the powered rail on the rail track where you want the Minecart to stop. Make sure that the point you choose is not more than 8 blocks away from where the Minecart was powered. It automatically comes to a stop after covering almost 8 blocks.

• Then, make sure that the powered rail is not active. When the rail is inactive or powered down, it is maroon in color and not glowing (on the left). There should be no redstone signal source powering the rail.

• Finally, whenever an active minecart will reach the inactive powered rail, it will automatically come to a halt. This mechanic can be used to make minecarts stop at train stations if you decide to make one in your village.

Just like that, you now know about one of the most unconventional but useful transportation tools in Minecraft. You can add powered rail to your collection systems, common routes, and even use it as transporters in mob and XP farms. These best Minecraft maps have a variety of creative ways to use the powered rail in the game. Though, we are more interested in finding out what you are going to do with a powered rail. So, do share your ideas in the comments below!