Powered Rail

For other Rail related objects found in *Minecraft*, see Rail (Disambiguation).
A **Powered Rail** is a block that decreases and increases the speed of Minecarts on a Rail system. It was added as a response to the minecart booster bug, which was fixed with the release of Beta 1.6 and 0.8.0 for *Minecraft: Pocket Edition*. Like Detector Rails and Activator Rails, and unlike regular rails, powered rails cannot be curved.

## Sources

Powered rails may be found in some Abandoned Mineshafts, inside Chest Minecarts. Alternatively, they can be crafted by using a Crafting Table using the following arrangement:

## Mechanics

Powered rails are operated by Redstone currents, which may come from a Lever, a Button, another circuit, a Redstone Torch, or a detector rail.

### On/Off Switch

Powered rails, much like redstone wire, have two possible states: on or off.

A rail that is "off" slows any passing minecart. The force is generally strong enough to bring a moving minecart to a complete stop or to hold a minecart in place on a slope. However, if the minecart is going fast enough, one unpowered rail will not stop the minecart. A rail in the "on" state will accelerate a minecart if any of the following is true:

1. The minecart is already moving, in which case the cart is accelerated in the direction of motion
2. The minecart is stationary, but one end of the powered rail is up against a solid block. In this case, the cart is accelerated in the direction that is not blocked.
3. The minecart is stationary, but the powered rail is on a slope. The instant the powered rail is activated, the brake is released and the cart will start moving down due to gravity. As the cart is now moving, rule (1) applies and the cart is accelerated in that direction.

The second and third cases can both be used to create simple stone button-activated launchpads.

### Power

Power can be transmitted to the rail from any of the six adjacent positions (above, below, or any side) in the same ways that redstone wire is powered. Strangely, the rail can also receive power from the five positions immediately above those adjacent positions. In other words, the rail acts as if it is two blocks high, and can receive power through any of eleven adjacent spaces, just like a door. This works whether the upper space is occupied or empty. However, powering the rail through the upper space currently exhibits more bugs related to updating.

### Momentum

The speed of a cart which is boosted using powered rails is calculated to be at a maximum of 8 m/s. However, the cart maintains an internal "momentum" value that keeps the cart at the maximum speed of 8 m/s until the excess momentum is depleted.

### Slopes

Launching from rest via four powered rails, an occupied cart has enough momentum to climb a 1/1 slope 10 blocks high without further boosting, and then travel horizontally at a very slow speed for at least a dozen blocks before coming to a stop. Such a cart does not have enough momentum to climb an 11 block high slope. An empty cart in a similar setup will only climb 5 blocks and then travel a few blocks horizontally.

## Trivia

* Powered rails will always show as powered in the inventory, even if destroyed and collected while it was unpowered.
* In the coding, powered rails are referenced as "goldenrail".
* Before the addition of redstone in *Minecraft Pocket Edition*, powered rails did not need any redstone-related power source for them to be powered up since redstone did not exist yet in the old versions.
	+ Powered rails also did not have redstone in its crafting recipe before redstone was introduced.

## Gallery

Powered Rail.gif