Minecart

Minecart

Type	Vehicles
Renewable	Yes
Stackable	No
Internal ID	JE: 42 BE: 84
Network ID	JE: 10
Entity ID	minecart
Drops	Minecart (1)
Health points	6 ()
First appearances	See History
Data value	dec: 328 hex: 148 bin: 101001000
Name	minecart

This article is about the rideable minecart. For other uses, see Minecart (disambiguation).

A minecart is a train-like vehicle entity that runs on rails.

Obtaining

Minecarts can be retrieved by attacking them for some time. They will also be destroyed if they make contact with a cactus.

Crafting

Ingredients	Crafting recipe
Iron Ingot

Other minecarts

Minecarts with chests, minecarts with hoppers, minecarts with furnaces, and minecarts with TNT, will drop 1 minecart and the block put in it when destroyed, Minecart with Command Blocks can only be given to the player with the /give command. Minecarts with spawners will only drop 1 minecart when broken. Like Minecarts with Spawners, Minecarts with Command Blocks will only drop 1 minecart when broken. Also, the latter two can only be used with commands.

Usage

A minecart can be placed in the same manner as most blocks, but can only be placed on top of a rail. Once placed, it may be derailed by pushing it off the end of the track. After this, it can be railed again by placing a rail directly below it, or pushing it onto a track.

Transportation

The rideable minecart on rails surrounded by wood slabs

Minecarts can be ridden by pressing the "use" control on them. Once inside, an external impulse may be needed to make the minecart start moving. The player can slowly move the minecart forwards while riding it, by pressing forward. If a mob walks in front of an empty minecart, it will be pulled into the cart.

Players can exit the minecart by pressing sneak, however if there is only one block of headroom above the cart the player will take 1 () of suffocation damage as their head will be temporarily in the ceiling. When a minecart is exited, it searches for an adjacent or diagonal 2×2×3 area to put the player 1.5 blocks away from the cart. If none are available, the player is deposited directly above the minecart. Consequently, the player falls inside the minecart.

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 minecart, if the minecart lands on a rail, the player will not take any fall damage.

Behavior

Speed

Minecarts have a predefined speed limit of 8 m/s per axis of travel. (1 block = 1 meter; 8 m/s = 28.8 km/hr.) A minecart traveling diagonally can therefore travel up to 11.314 m/s (i.e. the square root of the quantity 8² + 8²) When a minecart comes to a turn it moves diagonally across that turn.

Powered rails powered by redstone will give minecarts a boost of speed. Speed is gradually decreased if there are no powered rails to assist its movement. The speed decreases at a faster rate when going uphill, compared to when moving horizontally. A minecart does not need powered rails to assist its movement down a hill.

Anything in the way of the minecart will take it to a dead stop. Once a minecart has left the track, it will rapidly decelerate within one or two blocks. When a mob touches a minecart they affect it in the same way a player would, i.e. mobs that move up against a still cart will set it in motion.

If a minecart is moving fast enough, it can skip across one block without a track and reattach to track on the other side, at significantly reduced energy and speed.

In Legacy Console Edition, minecarts are much faster than in Java Edition.

Merged minecarts

Merged minecarts are two or more minecarts merged. Their special feature is their odd way of losing speed. When coming off a track, merged minecarts initially lose their speed to around walking speed. But after first contact, they won't lose their speed anymore.

This way they can be used to cross certain distances when the player's only goal is to not actively walk towards the player's goal / target. Or when the player doesn't have enough resources to cover the complete distance, this measure can be considered. Note: for this concept to work, at least 3 minecarts will have to be merged. Doing this can detach the minecarts by pushing one off of the rails, or the one the player is riding might get stuck on a tight turn. Speed may decrease when merged. This can be used to get the "On A Rail" achievement.

Unoccupied carts, incline with boost

This table shows the distance traveled by an unoccupied minecart on an incline, with a boost (or no boost). The most efficient way is to use only 1 boost at the bottom of the incline on the flat surface. Using 2 will increase by about 20% or 1.5m. All distance trends based on the height seem to be logarithmic. The carts started from rest, on an incline (at Height).

-Height-	No Boost	Bottom	Bottom and Top	All boosts on incline and bottom
1	2.77m	8.77	10.8	10.8
2	4.59m	9.59	10.83	13.37
3	5.81m	9.81	11.66	15.12
4	7.04m	10.04	12.46	16.95
5	7.87m	10.87	12.29	17.95
10	11.65m	13.38	15.12	21.68
100	15.87m	17.05	17.54	25.34

Collision

Minecarts seem to be about the same size as a block (1x1). Because of this, a ladder, door or trapdoor will prevent it from falling down a 1x1 hole.

Carts on rails will also ignore collision in certain situations. A cart traveling uphill, downhill, or on a curve with a block placed in front of it will go through the block.

A player or mob riding in a minecart will not collide with or suffocate in any transparent blocks.

They will be suffocated if their heads run into any opaque block.

Minecarts are completely unaffected by ice, blue ice and packed ice.

Mobs

Most mobs can ride minecarts, but only some types of mobs can control them. Mobs cannot exit the minecart unless the minecart is destroyed or moves onto an active activator rail. Endermen therefore are unable to teleport out of minecarts.

If the player pushes a mob on a minecart or a mob moves into the minecart's space, the mob will ride it. Some mobs are able to nudge minecarts while in them, like players.

Tamed wolves will follow the player when in a minecart.

The player can bump a medium slime in a minecart, and it will be unable to attack. However, a large slime is able to attack.

A spider jockey makes a minecart it is riding in automatically accelerate.

Boats

When a boat is riding in a minecart, the minecart will travel much faster on rails, approximately as fast as on powered rails. The movement in the boat minecart is glitchy and moving forward with the W key will move the cart backwards relative to the player, and vice versa for moving backward with the S key. The minecart will also move on railless ground at a crawling speed, but it will not float in water despite being in a boat.

Using this glitch can be far more resource efficient, since the boat minecart can move at the speed of a powered rail track on flat ground and on slopes. Another physics glitch with the boat minecart is the extreme reduction in friction when the minecart it on rails, which is similar to the lack of friction when a boat is riding on ice. This glitch can be done in survival without cheats simply by pushing a minecart into a boat on the track.

Data values

Entity data

See also: Chunk format

Minecarts have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity.

• Entity data
  • Tags common to all entities see Template:Nbt inherit/entity/template
  • Tags common to all minecarts see Template:Nbt inherit/vehicle/template

Achievements

Main article: Achievements

Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Availability				Xbox points earned	Trophy type (PS)
				Xbox	PS	Bedrock	Nintendo
	On A Rail	Travel by minecart to a point at least 500m in a single direction from where you started.	Travel by minecart to a point at least 500 m from where you started. Distance is measured in a straight line.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	40G	Gold

Video

Note: This video shows only 3 varieties of minecarts, as it is outdated. There are currently 6 varieties.

History

Java Edition Infdev
June 18, 2010					Minecarts added. They are not rideable, but instead are used to store things in. Right-clicking them will open them like a chest (with the container called "Minecart". Filling them up will make the dirt layer inside them rise.
June 24, 2010					The minecart's texture has now been changed.
					The minecart mechanics have now been changed to rideable minecarts, removing their ability to store items.
Java Edition Alpha
v1.0.4					Added sitting animation for riding minecarts.
v1.0.14					Minecarts are now used to craft furnace and storage minecarts.
Java Edition Beta
1.5					Minecarts will now break faster with hands.
					Powered rails have now been introduced, which enables minecarts to move automatically, although previous methods of boosting will now no longer work or work as effectively.
					The detector rail switch has been introduced for use in detecting minecarts. Prior to this update, carts were detected by using pressure plates in line with cart tracks. This had the often undesirable effect of dramatically slowing or even stopping the minecart, which limited the use of this design mostly to boosters.
1.6			?		A minecart will now transfer any fall damage it suffers onto its rider and will not be destroyed upon impact.
1.8			?		If the player punches a minecart when descending from a jump, it will show the critical hit animation. This also happens if the player punches the cart while still in it.
Java Edition
1.0.0			Beta 1.9 Prerelease		C418 posted a sound showing the sound that minecarts make.
1.3.1			12w21b		The player will now no longer spawn on top/inside of the minecart after getting out; instead the player gets out a few blocks away. Also, the player can nudge a stationary minecart while inside it to move onto a powered rail, etc.
1.4.2			12w38b		Sounds for minecarts have now been added.
1.5			13w02a		The first image Jeb released. Minecarts can now be edited with a third party program to show any block inside of it (it will not take on the characteristics of this block), as well as make it take on the characteristics of any cart.
					Minecart types will now no longer all share the same entity ID – Minecart – and are now no longer distinguished by a Type field. They have now been given separate entity IDs.
					Minecarts are now used to craft TNT minecarts.
			13w03a		Minecarts are now used to craft hopper minecarts.
1.7.2			13w39a		Added minecart with command block.
1.8			14w11a		Minecart physics have now been changed - they will now go faster and further, can derail at corners if going too fast and refuse to go uphill and they can also (if going fast enough) go over 1 block.
					The collision and position handling of minecarts have now been improved.
			14w17a		All changes to old minecart physics used before 14w11a have now been reverted.
1.9.1			?		Typos in minecarts with hoppers and chests, reading "container.minecart'' have now been fixed.
1.11			16w32a		The entity ID has now been changed from MinecartRideable to minecart.
1.13			17w47a		Prior to The Flattening, this item's numeral ID was 328.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.8.0			build 2		Added minecarts.
			build 3		Minecarts will now ride smoother.
0.13.0			build 1		Sounds for minecarts have now been added.
			build 2		Minecarts will now stack on top of each other.
0.14.0			build 1		Minecarts can now be used to craft storage, TNT, and hopper minecarts.
Legacy Console Edition
TU1	CU1	1.0	Patch 1		Added minecarts.
					Minecarts are now twice the speed than in other editions.
TU12					Minecarts are now slower.
TU13					Minecarts are now faster again.
TU21	CU9	1.14			The minecart limit has now been increased.
TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3		Minecart sounds have now been updated.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added minecarts.

Issues

Issues relating to "Minecart" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

• Minecarts appear to float above the track, as their model has no wheels.
• If you view your inventory while riding in a minecart you will appear sitting down in mid-air.
• You are able to teleport to another minecart while sitting in a minecart by right clicking a minecart in your range.
• If the sound is muted in the options while riding a minecart, and then turned back up, the minecart will no longer make noise in your client until you exit the minecart.
• If a minecart is shot with a bow and arrow, the minecart will get destroyed.
• If a saddled pig is riding a minecart, the player can ride the pig. Doing so will cause the minecart to be able to ride freely at the player's walking speed. It is unknown whether this is a glitch or not.
• It seems that hunger does not deplete while inactive in a minecart. (At least in normal difficulty).

Gallery

• 

  A pig inside a burning minecart

• 

  Minecarts being stacked on each other

References

Items

View at: Template:Items/content [edit]

Entities

View at: Template:Entities/content [edit]