Powered Rail

This article is about the powered rail. For other types of rails, see Rail (disambiguation).

Powered Rail

Renewable	Yes
Stackable	Yes (64)
Tool
Blast resistance	0.7
Hardness	0.7
Luminant	No
Transparent	Yes
Flammable	No
Catches fire from lava	No

A powered rail is a type of rail that is used to increase or decrease the velocity of moving minecarts.

Obtaining

Breaking

Powered rails can be crafted and previously-placed powered rails can be broken with bare hands or any tool, dropping themselves as items.

Block	Powered Rail
Hardness	0.7
Tool
Breaking time
Default	1.05
Wooden	0.55
Stone	0.3
Iron	0.2
Diamond	0.15
Netherite	0.15
Golden	0.1

A powered rail also drops as an item when the block beneath it is removed, water or lava flows over it,‌^{[Java Edition only]} or a piston moves it into a space with no floor below it.

Chest loot

Item	Structure	Container	Quantity	Chance
Java Edition
Powered Rail	Mineshaft	Chest	1–4	27.1%
Bedrock Edition
Powered Rail	Mineshaft	Chest	1–4	27.1%

Crafting

Ingredients	Crafting recipe
Gold Ingot + Stick + Redstone Dust	6

Usage

See also: Tutorials/Minecarts

A powered rail can be used as a rail and as a redstone component.

To place a powered rail, use a powered rail item while pointing at a surface facing the space the powered rail should occupy. A powered rail can be placed on:

• the top of any full solid opaque block (stone, dirt, blocks of gold, etc.), including full-block mechanism components (command blocks, dispensers, droppers, note blocks, and redstone lamps)
• the top of a hopper, upside-down slab, or upside-down stairs.

A powered rail cannot be attached to the side or bottom of any block, but attempting to make such an attachment may cause the powered rail to attach to the top of a block under the destination space. For example, if a fence is on the ground, attempting to attach a powered rail to the side of the fence causes the powered rail to be attached to the top of the ground next to the fence instead.

When placed, a powered rail configures itself to line up with any adjacent rails (including activator rails, detector rails, and other powered rails), as well as adjacent rails one block up. If there are two adjacent rails on non-opposite sides, or three or more adjacent rails, a powered rail lines up in the east-west direction. If there are no adjacent rails, a powered rail lines up in the north-south direction (but if a rail is later placed to the east or west, the powered rail re-orients itself in the east-west direction even if it is already connected to another rail to the north or south). If a rail it would line up with is one block up, a powered rail slants upward toward it (with multiple options to slant upward to, a powered rail "prefers", in order: west, east, south, and north). Other configurations can be created by placing and removing various rails.

It cannot be placed suspended in midair, even with commands, which is not unintentional.

Rail

Main article: Rail

Powered rails (and other rails) can be used as "roads" for minecarts. A minecart that enters a powered rail's space from either end of the powered rail continues to move in the direction the powered rail is facing, but its speed may change depending on whether the powered rail is active or not (see below). A minecart that enters a powered rail's space from the side turns east or south (depending on the powered rail's orientation), or in the downward direction for a slanted powered rail.

Redstone component

See also: Redstone circuit

Powered rails can be used to affect the speed of minecarts that travel over them.

Activation

A powered rail is a redstone mechanism and can be activated by:

• an adjacent active power component (for example, a redstone torch, a block of redstone, a daylight sensor, etc.)
• an adjacent powered block (strongly-powered or weakly-powered)
• a powered redstone comparator or redstone repeater facing the powered rail
• powered redstone dust configured to point at the powered rail, or a directionless "dot" next to it; a powered rail is not activated by adjacent powered redstone dust that is configured to point in another direction.

An activated powered rail also activates any adjacent powered rails it is connected to, up to eight away from the original activation source. Thus a single activation source can activate up to 17 rails (one original in the middle and eight on either side). An activated powered rail does not activate non-connected adjacent rails.

Behavior

An active powered rail:

• increases the speed of a moving minecart in the direction it is already moving. Specifically, let the speed in both the X and Z directions (meters / tick) combined be "speed". If speed > 0.01, then every tick the minecart is passing over the powered rail, it's x velocity is increased by (xspeed * 0.06 / speed) and it's z velocity is increased by (zspeed * 0.06 / speed)
• accelerate a non-moving minecart away from a solid opaque block the powered rail is facing (so a non-moving minecart moves away from the block when the powered rail activates, and a moving minecart bounces off a block an active powered rail is facing because it stops and then gets accelerated away)

An inactive powered rail reduces the speed of a moving minecart, usually stopping it within one block's distance even on a downward-slanted track. If a slanted powered rail activates with a non-moving minecart on it, the minecart starts moving downward (because it is no longer being braked by an inactive powered rail) and is then accelerated downward.

Powered rails cannot increase the speed of a minecart to more than 8 blocks per second on either the north-south or east-west axis. The speeds that can be achieved with varying numbers of powered rails or intervals of normal rails between powered rails is complex -- for a thorough discussion, see Tutorials/Minecarts.

Sounds

Java Edition:

Sound	Subtitle	Source	Description	Namespaced ID	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance	Sound parameters
									Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance	Stream	Preload
	Block broken	Blocks	Breaking the block	block.metal.break	subtitles.block.generic.break	1.0	1.2	16	?	?	?	?	?
	None	Blocks	Falling on the block with fall damage	block.metal.fall	None	0.5	1.25	16	?	?	?	?	?
	Block breaking	Blocks	Mining the block	block.metal.hit	subtitles.block.generic.hit	0.25	0.75	16	?	?	?	?	?
	Block placed	Blocks	Placing the block	block.metal.place	subtitles.block.generic.place	1.0	1.2	16	?	?	?	?	?
	Footsteps	Blocks	Walking on the block	block.metal.step	subtitles.block.generic.footsteps	0.15	1.5	16	?	?	?	?	?

Bedrock Edition: ^{[needs in-game testing]}

Sound	Description	Namespaced ID	Volume	Pitch	Sound parameters
					Volume	Pitch	Stream	Load on low memory
?	Breaking the block	dig.metal	?	1.2	?	?	?	?
?	Falling on the block with fall damage	fall.metal	?	?	?	?	?	?
?	Mining the block	hit.metal	?	0.75	?	?	?	?
?	Jumping from the block	jump.metal	?	?	?	?	?	?
?	Falling on the block without fall damage	land.metal	?	?	?	?	?	?
?	Walking on the block	step.metal	?	?	?	?	?	?
?	Placing the block	use.metal	?	1.2	?	?	?	?

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Namespaced ID	Block tags (JE)	Item tags (JE)	Translation key
Powered Rail	powered_rail	prevent_mob_spawning_inside rails	rails	block.minecraft.powered_rail

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Namespaced ID	Numeric ID	Translation key
Powered Rail	golden_rail	27	tile.golden_rail.name

Block data

See also: Data values

‌^{[Bedrock Edition only]}

Bits	Values
0x1 0x2 0x4	A three-bit field storing a value from 0 to 5: 0: flat track going north-south 1: flat track going west-east 2: sloped track ascending to the east 3: sloped track ascending to the west 4: sloped track ascending to the north 5: sloped track ascending to the south
0x8	Set if rail is active.

Block states

See also: Block states

‌^{[Java Edition only]}

Java Edition:

Name	Default value	Allowed values	Description
powered	false	false true	True if rail is activated.
shape	north_south	east_west north_south	Specifies the rail's orientation.
		ascending_east ascending_north ascending_south ascending_west	A rail that ascends toward the direction noted. For example, an ascending_west rail is a straight rail that goes upward from the east toward the west.

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Default value	Allowed values	Description
rail_data_bit	false	false true	True if rail is activated.
rail_direction	0	0 1 2 3 4 5	The rail is not ascending.
		6 7 8 9	A rail ascends.

History

Java Edition Beta
1.5					Added powered rails.
1.6		?			The effectiveness of powered rails has now been increased as a response to fixing the minecart booster bug.
Java Edition
1.9		15w44a			Powered rails can now be found in abandoned mineshaft chest minecarts.
1.11		16w32b			All rail types' hitbox heights are decreased from a full block to a half block.
1.13		17w47a			The ID of powered rails has been changed from golden_rail to powered_rail.
					Prior to The Flattening, this block's numeral ID was 27.
1.14		18w43a			The textures of powered rails has now been changed.
		19w12b			Powered rails can now be placed on glass, ice, glowstone and sea lantern.
Pocket Edition Alpha
0.8.0		build 2			Added powered rails, but the rails are always powered.
0.13.0		build 1			Powered rails no longer have intrinsic power, i.e. they need to be powered by an external power source.
0.14.0		build 1			Powered rails can now be found in minecart with chests inside of abandoned mineshafts.
Bedrock Edition
1.10.0		beta 1.10.0.3			The textures of powered rails has now been changed.
Legacy Console Edition
TU1	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added powered rails.
		1.90			The textures of powered rails has now been changed.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added powered rails.

Issues

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

Trivia

• Powered rails were originally a suggestion for golden tracks.

See also

• Rail
• Activator Rail
• Detector Rail

Redstone

View at: Template:Redstone/content [edit]

Blocks

View at: Template:Blocks/content [edit]