How to Make Rails in Minecraft

One of the most common means of transport in the world of Minecraft is the minecarts. They are entities that you can get inside of and ride. However, you cannot even place minecart down without rails. These non-solid blocks are easily craftable but also generate naturally in your world. There are several rail variants in-game, with most of them having redstone-related functions. However, in this guide, we will focus on the simplest rail of them all and show you how you can make and use it in Minecraft.

Resources You Need to Make Rails

Admittedly, rails are not the cheapest to craft as you need iron to make them. The crafting recipe for rails in Minecraft requires the following items:

• 6 Iron Ingots
• 1 Stick
• Crafting Table

However, this recipe yields 16 rails as a result, which is more than relieving. So, if you need lots of rails, we recommend you first make an iron farm, so you can ensure not all of your iron supplies are spent making rails.

Moreover, as is the case with most recipes, you’ll also need a crafting table. We’ve already prepared a dedicated guide on how to make a crafting table, so feel free to check it out if you’re a beginner.

How to Craft Minecraft Rails

After you collect the iron ingots, a stick, and the crafting table, follow these steps to make regular rails.

• Place the crafting table in your world and right-click it to open the crafting UI.
• Start this recipe by placing three iron ingots, filling the left column of the grid completely.
• Repeat the same thing for the right column too. So, only the middle column should be empty.

• Finally, place a stick in the center of the crafting grid.
• Congrats! You have successfully crafted rails in the game. Click on the rails item on the right to craft and move them to your inventory.

Alternatively, you can use a crafter in Minecraft instead of the crafting table, but you will need to provide it with a redstone signal for it to spit out the items you want to craft.

Where Can You Find Rails in Your World

Rails naturally generate in two Minecraft structures. The first one is pretty fitting – the abandoned mineshaft. They are underground structures that extend in all directions, as well as vertically. The corridors are tight and dark, so fighting mobs is kind of inevitable. However, another danger that’s awaiting you in these spooky tunnels is special monster spawners.

They spawn exclusively cave spiders, poison-inflicting Minecraft mobs, that can get quite tricky to deal with, especially if you’re outnumbered. Mineshafts are fairly common, so it probably won’t take too long for you to find one. Rails here are generated occasionally on the floor and also in minecart chests.

On the other hand, the other structure where rails are generated naturally are woodland mansions. These massive surface buildings are much more dangerous than the mineshafts. They are filled with regular hostile mobs, as well as powerful illagers. They are evil versions of villagers and also one of the strongest hostile mobs in the game.

Furthermore, the rails are generated only in one room in the woodland mansions, so finding them would not be that easy. Therefore, it’s a better idea to stick with the mineshafts if you cannot craft the rails.

Note:

You can break rails with any tool and even by hand but using a pickaxe will do the job fastest.

How to Use Rails and Minecarts in Minecraft

The main function of rails is to provide minecarts with a path they can travel along. You can place these blocks by right-clicking only on the top of blocks with a full surface. This includes full solid blocks, as well as upside-down stairs and top-half slabs.

There are all sorts of different ways you can place and attach rails, and it heavily determines the minecart’s movement route.

The mechanics behind this can be difficult to explain, due to their complexity and specificity. So, we suggest checking out this article related to the rail position and orientation on Minecraft Wiki. Also, unlike powered rails, the regular ones do not provide any boost to the minecart. So, having a track made only of the normal rails won’t let the minecart travel too far, unless it’s built on a slope.

In addition, to make them more player-friendly, regular rails can interact with redstone. This is the case for a curved rail that is attached to one rail track but is also next to another track. Powering that curved rail with a lever for example will make it switch between the two tracks.

Thanks to the ability to place rails in different ways and their transparent appearance, players like to use them as a decorative addition to their house builds as well. Usually, rails represent some kind of a rope holding the wood stockpile, or perhaps cargo on a truck in one place. Besides that, rails can portray anything that your imagination wants them to.

So, that’s pretty much it. If you’ve reached the end of this guide, now you won’t have any problems making and using rails in-game. Do you use minecarts and rails often in your world? Tell us in the comment section below!