Re: faster minecarts: this might sound weird, but I always thought that the original powered rail should have gold replaced with copper, and then make an "upgraded" powered rail with the old recipe. That way old systems don't break and rails immediately become slightly more viable because of how ridiculously easy it is to find copper

Linking minecarts with other minecarts with chains is such a good idea

Minecart used to be a core part of Minecraft... can't believe they didn't update them during the Caves & Cliffs update. I really hope they add the powered rail/momentum changes and linking minecarts at some point soon

I've always used minecarts for one thing : underground transportation. Especially since the cavern update. You can use a lot of things for transport on the surface, whereas underground, it's a pain to reach the depths, it takes forever. You can also use the minecart chest to send your loot back to base during long mining sessions.

It literally hurts me to think about how hard mojang abandoned the minecart. It's such a fantastic feature that never gets the love it deserves, unless you play with the Railcraft mod.

Minecarts used to be THE method of inventory management & transportation, providing a safe passage that is, more often than not, lit up and relatively safe. Carts in the present are suffering with the same syndrome as boats did before Mojang's boat patch years ago. Worst part about this is there could be an alternative to hopper minecart - it's only a matter of time until we get the new Elytra of hoppers. One last thing - Minecarts, for whatever reason, prefer some directions than others. You'd get different behavior when it goes to the west, compared to north.

A mini minecart update would fit great into another, larger update. Kind of how they did observers, skulk sensors, and lecturn. An additional feature in redstone to further add to creativity

For the furnace Minecart chunk loading feature, make it a gamerule that is false by default. That way large servers don't need to worry about lag and small servers can enjoy the feature.

I feel like the Elytra really took a lot of the creativity out of the game. It made so many cool methods of transportation nearly completely obsolete. I never see huge railway stations in SMP servers anymore, and that was one of my favourite things about early Minecraft.

Furnace minecarts could be great chunk loaders, since they will naturally run out of fuel eventually, They would just have to make sure they aren’t infinitely remotely refuelable

Something i like about minecraft, despite the slowness compared to elytra, is its relaxing. While elytra is high speed and can be dangerous, minecarts are slow and you can actually step away for a moment to stretch or relax as you head somewhere. If you wanted, you could make bridges or tunnels, make cool scenery, or just ensure safety by making a tube. I like that minecarts are, at the very minimum, reliable for long distance travel safely for individual persons.

8:34 Use a trapped chest instead of a lever. It's nice and big and easy to click on, and when you get too far away, it automatically closes, returning the intersection to its default state.

The chunk loading minecart would immediately set minecarts apart from other modes of transport, as a playerless item transport. It would be beautiful. Regarding your project, I made a small circuit that checks if a chest minecart has a particular item, then returns it to the minecart, and if there is a match, the path changes. This could be used for chest minecart routing, which would only be useful if it could travel further than loaded chunks.

Furnace minecarts should definitely act as a lazy chunk loader (same as nether portals) as long as it has fuel in it. I'm honestly surprised junction rails aren't a thing.

Another change I thought of would be to make moving minecarts load chunks in a 3x3 area. This way they could cross chunk borders and travel long distances by themselves, without the player having to be there to load them. This could make them viable for transporting items and entities long distances autonomously.

I remember back in beta saying they should let you jump in a minecart Donkey Kong Country style. Pair that with the better momentum handling like you suggested and you'd unlock so many creative options

A moving minecart being an automatic chunk loader would be cool. You could have chest minecarts transport your items all over the map without having to supervise them. Villager transportation would be much more convenient too.

I remember that experimental change where they increased the minecart speed and made them derail under some conditions... I really didn't expect them to abandon that idea completely after reverting it, but now it's been so long...

Chunk-loading furnace carts and linking via chains I think are what I'd want to see most, even in the modern era I could really see myself wanting to use them again with just those additions. I used to love getting lost down in a cave and leaving a rail behind me leading back to an unloading station at the entrance, and sending back a loaded-up chest cart to empty my inventory every so often. Really felt like I was mining, and it was exciting to get back and look over the total haul at the end. At least until I realized I had gone too far and unloaded much of the track, and 20 carts had piled up halfway down the line. I doubt we'll ever see minecarts be the optimal item-transfer method again, but to me they will always be the most fun and "Minecraft-y" way to do it, so it really would be awesome to have them updated; at least a little.

I think chaining minecarts together would really be what they need. It'd let you mass move basically any amount of materials, so long as you have the minecarts for it. I've already used minecarts to automatically send mined materials back to an item sorter, but this would really up the amount to match pace with large scale mining.

Furnace minecarts are already able to make small "trains", it is very gimmicky though and basically brakes when a minecart has to turn though, there is a ilmango video "Why furnace minecart isnt as useless as you think" about it, maybe consider giving it a look :). I love the idea of furnace minecarts working as chunkloaders, maybe they could only be chunkloading when there is fuel in them, that should overcome the problem with them lagging the world.

The biggest advantage of minecarts in my opinion is the fact that you don't need to do anything once you start the ride. Making a track to somewhere underground, somewhere you go back and forward often, or just to some hard to reach place is an optimal use case. You need to build an infrastructure for it first, but for me, as a builder, it's just another fun project I can work on. Any other transport method in the game needs player input.

Spent a couple of months designing a subway system for our SMP, and we're still on the testing phase and having some issues. Minecarts are incredibly unpredictable right now, and getting them to consistently stop at the correct interval and keep the right distance from one another is such a pain (since trains are impossible / will break when turning). The direction they're facing and sub-tick mechanics possibly have something to do with all that, which is crazy. I really like the ideas outlined here, especially linking minecarts with chains and the possibility to chunk-load with them. I hope they will have their speed increased as well, and I love the idea of being able to control it with signal strength!

I honestly think all these ideas seem great and vanilla feeling. I especially like the minecarts with chains idea because it would make transporting multiple things at the same time much easier.

I was actually thinking about minecarts a couple of weeks ago. I think a big thing is that they'd be most useful early/mid-game, before you get any elytra or shulkers, or as you're building a base (so you can plan the minecarts into it) but it's just so expensive. I think a big thing would be to make them cheaper, i.e. using iron nuggets rather than ingots, potentially crafting more of them at a time as well. That wouldn't solve the issues, but i think it would help a lot.

A few ideas I had with Furnace-Minecarts are: -Reverse the direction they go when fueling them manually, so that you can get pushed while sitting in another Minecart. -Make them refuelable by hoppers, choosing their direction the same way a Minecart on a powered rail does. This way they would make a cheaper, early-game alternative to powered rails without needing to program new game mechanics, as with adding chain trains. Some bonus features that would be fun but not as necessary: -Activator rails could be able to either change their direction or stop them. -Being able to burn any type of fuel with its according burn time. -Give them an inventory/UI that shows the burn time.

I downloaded a mod (think it was "more minecarts" or something) that fixed a hell of a lot of issues for me. It added "crossroads" so rails could cross over, as well as actual high speed rails. It also added rails that would switch if you held up a certain colour flag, which made a proper train rail network easier to build

12:20 I mean, furnace minecarts already run on "fuel". It would make sense that they needed to keep fuel in order to keep loading the space around them. Leaving them hanging around with fuel, just would mean they would eventually run out of fuel. Also, in order to not make them too game breaking, you could have them only render minecrarts and redstone, kind of lika a lazy chunk, but also including the minecrats. The mani problem with "loading" though, is the game is loaded in "chunks". Having the minecart load only one chunk would probably break it's movement while changing chunks, so it should at least load a 3x3 grid, which is not small space for a chunk loader.

I actually did something similar to your abandoned project, but I was using the Create mod. But it was before the Create mod added all the fancy train stuff, so the redstone was mostly vanilla. The player would pick up a "train ticket" (renamed piece of paper) and throw it in the hopper minecart in the front of the train. Then the train would go, and there'd be item filters before the junction to switch the tracks. It got a bit messy though when i had to had multiple junctions and you'd need to load the minecart with multiple items in the right order.

One thing I've been thinking of is to make minecarts more like Factorio's trains. Lower the acceleration, but raise the top speed, to make it the best option for long-distance travel, and also make it so that you can link the carts (as you said), and also have some way of figuring out if a cart is empty or full, as I don't think comparators work on chest minecarts

For the chunk loading thing, you could make it only load new chunks when it’s moving and then not when it stops, so that old minecarts that are lying around don’t cause lag and moving ones can get where they’re going

I love all the ideas you presented. In my current survival world, I'm using the Audaki Cart Engine mod and the No Rocket Boosting (for elytra) mod to make transportation feel a bit nicer. An update to minecarts is probably my #1 priority for what Mojang should develop.

I really hope rails are made just a tiny bit cheaper, instead of 16 maybe it's increased to 24 or something just to encourage crafting a bunch of a minecart setup wonderful video! really great ideas here

The biggest problem is what you mentioned at the beginning, that their utility is lost because of other items. I think minecarts are at their most useful underground because you can't really use Elytras there, and horses and mules take up more space vertically so they can be difficult to navigate with. Shulker boxes do still threaten their item transporting utility, and so will bundles when they come out. So really, player transportation is all that minecarts have left. I agree being able to dictate their direction upon placement should be improved, especially since stair blocks have been figured out in this regard. Derailment shouldn't be a thing IMO, since that would inhibit building rails in caves. There are two things that I think would improve player transportation for minecarts: players being able to choose between two directions while in the cart, and being able to move yourself while in the cart without needing momentum. Being able to change direction on the fly would allow the player to build railways with more branching paths instead of having to stick to just one. As for cart mobility, not needing momentum to move the player around would simplify building railways immensely, instead of having to figure out how far apart powered rails need to be. Terraria has both these mechanics implemented in their rails and minecarts, and I can say I have used those far more often than Minecraft's rails and minecarts. Even when you have end game gear and mounts, railways can still be useful for moving around in the underground to specific biomes.

13:33 woah, with that fence gate trick you just gave an idea on how to fix my project

This video alone taught me more about minecarts and their mechanics in game than the countless Redstone videos I've watched over the years which includes videos that cover the order block updates happen in and wirelessly transmitting signals with entity IDs. I feel like all minecarts should travel at the same speed over the same track though for sure, the small difference in inertia is a very odd and specific detail to include in a game where all mobs are the same weight according to a weighted pressure plate including a Baby Chicken and an Iron Golem (unless I missed something and some mobs are heavier.)

FYI Stuff in a Minecart doesn't take Damage if it lands on a Rail, But it really should be consistent with boats, i.e. either Both always stop which is preferable, or boats only stop when landing on water and minecarts on rails, which arguably makes more sense but removes nice game mechanics for being able to get down places, but depends on priorities since you could view an overly easy way to descend as removing challenges posed by great heights but idk. That's also a really cool Idea you were trying to develop, I'd love to see that being something you could properly do! Really cool ideas for minecarts that aren't just "make them faster and cheaper" although arguably both of those are true to an extent.

I think you'd really like the railcraft mod. It adds locomotives, chunk loading carts, you can link carts together, there's speed changing rails, junctions, and a ton of other cool things.

I’m glad to know I’m not alone in enjoying building rails around my world! I’ve also been thinking about this for some time, as I’m trying to design a modpack that would incentivise rail building. It’s a very interesting game design problem. Your video and the comments section has plenty of ideas; thanks for it :)

Crazy when he said "10 years ago" I was picturing bright green alpha grass and was shocked when I saw the Savannah biome

I think the Create mod does a pretty good job of improving mine carts. The mods allows you to chain mine carts together as well as adding powered rails with built in speed control. But of course best part about the mod is that you can attach other blocks to mine carts allowing you to make harvesters and tunnel boring machines.

It could be nice if rails worked like door hinges, where if you click on one side of a block it turns that way when it has multiple options. That along with shift-placing rails would make stuff a bit easier!

Faster minecarts were a huge plus for me early game. I downloaded a plugin that increased the minecart speed MASSIVELY. It was roughly the same speed as an elytra. First thing I did early game was link up my base with a village around 2,000 blocks away and I used it extensively to get between my main base and the village with my iron farm. It was fun tunneling through the mountains and building massive bridges.

I love rails. I love the idea of them and linking up bases and farms. I still use them, but I think these changes would be REALLY nice.

Love this ideas dude! I’m hanging out for that Minecart update. That maintained momentum when falling is a huge one. It’d make roller coasters and player transport so much more fun!

Minecarts can actually be chained together like you mentioned! If you push a minecart into a furnace minecart it will get 'linked' and the furnace minecart can pull it. Unfortunately these trains don't survive turns...

Nice ideas! Totally agree such or similar changes should be added into the game. I also had an idea about dispatching using hoppers, but using a dispenser to not to put item yourself is so cool.

Your abandoned project is precisely how my Minecart network works in my survival world. It is incredibly complicated and labor intensive to produce, but it works wonderfully. I have it set up as a spiderweb of tracks between all my bases and there is a station at each one. I built a redstone machine at each station which dispenses named items into a chest minecart, which encode your destination. I love that you can go from any station to any station in the network. The main benefit over elytra is that you can travel while idle, which turns out to be something I value, but I don't think many other players value. I'd be happy to tell you how I overcame the challenges or show you my redstone, if you are still interested in this stuff.

Minecarts do keep momentum, they just happen to clip the block when they are past 50% off the rail and it slows them down a ton. Etho used soulsand to work around this issue once a long long time ago. Because the block collision is slightly shorter the cart would continue more naturally.

An entire rework for minecarts that adds variety and a multitude of customization and connective designs would insane. And is much needed.

I would love more uses for minecarts as well as an update to minecart rail systems. In my current survival world, I opted to build a railway leading there since it was a bit too far to walk, but not far enough to warrant a portal. I learned how to build an automtic dismounting track with redstone, something I never knew before! Personally I just find minecarts and rail systems super fascinating and I usually opt out of using Nether portals just so I can make some cool railways.

Love your videos! I really hope rails in general get an overhaul soon! Honestly 1.20 would've been a great time since its a rando update. Maybe next time though!

The chunkloading is pretty awesome, but at some point I recall the devs talking how they don't like chunk loading as much because that brings a mechanic thats in the background to the front, although I would argue this would make it more unoticable for the average person, albeit less consistent, anyways goodluck hitting 10k the next few days!

I’ve never heard someone with this sort of voice and such a lisp this is the most unique voice ive probably ever heard

That speed mechanic I used heavily. I did so much with it. From transport to rides, I had fun with it, but then it didn't get released.

Perhaps it could be good to dye minecarts or clad them with different wood types like boats. This would not affect their functionality at all but would allow you to colour code them or just change it because you think it looks nicer.

First of all, great video! Secondly, I have some things to say: 1. The speed adjustment mechanic is perfect, some people don't realise that changing the minecart's speed even slightly would break most rollercoasters. 2. Chaining minecarts is definitely needed, it's probably the most requested transportation feature, I'm 99% sure it's coming when the transportation update comes out. 3. Shift-placing rails is probably not possible (or at least clunky) in MCPE, but a way to change the orientation of blocks in general would be appreciated. There's already the debug stick, we just need something similar for survival. 4. The seperation of chest minecarts from minecarts could open up possibilities for a fully automated rail system for a city, where one railway is used for both item and mob transportation, so I'm not sure if I'd want it gone. 5. Furnace minecarts as chunk loaders sound like a fantastic idea, but it might affect performance. I'm not an expert in chunk loading mechanics in any way though, so I can't say. Maybe a gamerule that's off by default could adjust that?

The item switch i used to use for my community server. We handeld it by a system where you could travel from and to everywhere, with use of named items & specific item filters. Where only when you branch off you would need an item. Started on automating some junctions stations, but most were manual

I feel like we should have a steam engine cart or something like use pistons a furnace some cobble and a cauldron to craft it, attach it to a minecart and the more fuel you put in, the faster it goes for X amount of time according to the fuels burn time. For a quick stop, right click it with a bottle of water maybe to put out the fire?

I remember that in the console edition, minecarts were so much faster, it made building a subway for my city worthwhile, however when I converted the map to Java I was a bit disappointed to learn that it basically became useless due to significant decrease in speed

I love the chunk loader idea, but they should only load when powered so if you forget about one it’ll just stop loading after a while

Traveling and Automation often feel like the two primary uses for minecarts. From a traveling perspective... Elytra just completely ruined it. When fireworks didn't give a boost it felt balanced, but then it just became another level of traveling that couldn't be beat. That being said, to compete I could see two things for the traveling perspective. a) Remove the interaction between fireworks and elytra (probably not happening). b) Increase minecart speed. This seems far more doable, and the upside is that if it's of similar speed to the Elytra then it's perfect for traveling back and forth (especially in the Nether). As for automation, I think that's where minecarts should shine the most. Your daughter's idea of linking minecarts together using chains(or a similar method) is GENIUS. Having a rail system and having a 10 cart long train being pulled by a Minecart Furnace would feel so good in game. I think the biggest problem is cost vs. result. If you want to make a railway to one of your farms, that's going to cost you likely a few stacks of iron, perhaps a stack of gold, and most importantly quite a bit of time to set up properly.... However, getting an elytra and a shulker box, now you're constantly a minute or so away from ALL of your farms and being able to get 27 stacks of whatever you need to take back. HOWEVER, HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE. Minecraft needs to add more to do underground. We have Ancient Cities now, but if more structures, biomes, and so on that need to be visited often started existing underground then it would make Minecarts far more viable. It's true we have bubble elevators, but if there were more unique biomes underground that you had to travel between then minecarts would be perfect. In a perfect world. -Make Minecarts Faster -Include the ability to link Minecarts together -Make linked Minecarts interact with each other (Furnace Minecart can push/pull them all, Hopper Minecart can fill or take out from all connected Chest Minecarts) -Furnace Minecarts act as mini chunk loaders, but only while they have fuel -Add more for the player to do underground such as structures and biomes With the y-level now much lower compared to older editions of minecraft, the potential for exotic and extremely dangerous areas deep underground makes the viability of Minecarts and Railways higher than ever. (Deep Dark, Ancient Cities, Fossilized Mangroves, Volcanic Labyrinths, Arachnid Nests, Crystal Networks, Fungal Pathways, etc etc)

The derailment mechanic did make it into the game, but it’s hard to get a minecart up to the derailment speed without glitching it out.

My favourite ideas of the video, in order. 1. Analogical powered rails; 2. A rail switch block (and better rail swapping functionality overall); 3. Minecarts keeping momentum after derailing; 4. Linking minecarts together; 5. Just better minecart consistency, including between minecarts and boats; 6. Furnace minecarts as chunk loaders (it would be preferable to solve long distance transport without having to mess with chunk loading). While I agree just increasing minecarts' speed wouldn't be enough, it is still a great part of why they fell out of favour in relation to other transport methods. Powered rails and furnace minecarts should be reworked in such a way that a combination of both (assuming maximally powered rails in the analogical scenario) would make for faster transport than elytras or blue ice runways.

A german redstone engineer called "TheJoCraft" made a system called IMS (intelligent minecart system) which used a similar approach to your project. It was used to deliver items from a central storage to production outposts and the other way around.

Linking minecarts with the chains and furnace cart chunk loading would be so cool, and if the furnace minecart only chunk loaded when it was powered that might fix the issue you mentioned. Anyway, I also think some way to make high-speed rail or high-speed minecarts that outpace elytra would be great because then rails could be used for traveling to known locations that you go to often, and that would differentiate elytra as being more useful for exploration or for going to places you don't visit often and aren't worth the time to build a rail network. Also, something I wish you could do is open the furnace minecart UI to put in your fuel, which would also let you see how much remains after the cart has traveled a certain distance.

proud to say i was subscribed before 5k 💪💪 i really think your channel is gonna go somewhere, you make really creative content

A general update to tinkering, minecarts, and incorporating copper into redstone is necessary at this point. - Copper wiring as an addition to redstone that carries a signal more efficiently but requires a recipe with redstone to make. - Minecart chains are a cool idea for trains of people or goods and may be a way to keep carts from flying off the rails when at higher speeds. - I personally think a general overhaul of how rails work may be necessary to add more functionality, such as something akin to diagonal motion or junctions that bring together two separate tracks at an angle (along with better adjoining textures for T-Intersections). - A fun one would be a minecart with a sled on the front that allows you to new be stopped by entities on the tracks but instead moves them aside (or for carts, derails them). Without a sled, maybe it injures the mob/removes the entity and slows down the cart while also moving it out of the way. - With more inertia, perhaps rails that slow down a minecart would be ideal so that things involving entities wouldn't get hurt or put in jeopardy (assuming a potential idea of collision damage be a thing).

2:16 Derailing minecarts at abrupt corners 3:44 Customizable speed (depending upon redstone power level provided to powered rails) 4:15 Minecarts retaining Inertia/momentum 4:38 Linking minecarts (involving chains) 5:07 Consistent distance between minecarts on powered rails 5:21 Proper method for placing down rails in a certain orientation (perhaps via Shift-clicking) 5:49 Change in a rail's preferred orientation for connecting 6:35 Better mechanic for breaking/disposing minecarts (perhaps with Dispensers) 8:06 Parity between minecart freefall (sustains damage) and boat freefall (no damage) 8:26 Consistency in 3-way rail junctions 9:48 Rail intersections 10:36 Players going through the nether portal along with the minecart 11:20 Minecarts continuing travel beyond unloaded chunks (Furnace minecart acting as Chunk loader) [Cammie's Minecart Tweaks www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cammies-minecart-tweaks ]

Muito boas idéias, a Mojang é a empresa mais sortuda que existe, os próprios players fazem as alterações, testam e avaliam a utilidade. Espero de coração que eles não deixem de lado os minecarts, é um dos símbolos do minecraft, merece uma série de Updates assim como foi feito com os barcos.

Linked Minecarts are a great idea. I think they'd be the most useful feature proposed.

i think minecraft needs to stop adding useless mobs and go back and update stuff like, music, minecarts, redstone, etc.

I really like the ideas you presented. Personally i wish they added more types of "utility rails". One idea that comes to my mind is a rail that would teleport the closest player/mob inside a certain radius into a minecart (it could also potentially pull items in an area into a hopper minecart).

Kind of not in the subject but imagine your father being as passionate about Minecraft as you are yourself, must be so goddamn cool

Totally underrated 1:35 with that drug mule reference

This is an amazing video. Minecart always felt like a really underwhelming feature outside of the cool roller coasters of old. As for the rotation issues, I feel like that and a LOT of other things in Minecraft could be fixed if they just added in a wrench item that can rotate rotatable blocks. Logs, chests, glazed terracotta, rails, just to name a few.

I propose that the current rails, made of iron ingots, and current golden powered rails, should have their speed tripled compared to current speeds. I also think a new set of rails, made of iron nuggets for the base rails and copper ingots for powered, should be made with the same speed as current rails. I also suggest an enchantment for minecarts (maybe called Railroller 1 to 3) which would multiply speed by another 2-4 times. On iron ingot rails, with Railroller 3 minecarts, this would take you to 96 blocks per second. This is only beaten by rare endgame methods like riptide tridents with elytra, soul speed swimming and those insane Scicraft pearl cannons.

Honestly, the Create Mod does some super cool stuff with their trains. The sheer amount of bulk materials you can transport is nuts. The whole Create mod is super fun tbh without feeling like its going too far from Vanilla

I have a roller coaster world that i’ve been working on for years now (not every day, tho), and I’d absolutely love to see this aspect of the game get majorly updated

Furnaces should have an 'inventory' that you can fill with coal and it just keeps going. also different fuel sources could have different speeds, like coal blocks the fastest and planks the slowest

For chunk loading furnace minecart , they could make it so it only loads while having fuel in it, meaning a constant input of fuel is required, and loading stops soon after it runs out.

Minecarts that can go faster than elytras. Simple but effective, it’s all that’s really needed for people to start building rail networks. I like the idea of copper rails that someone proposed for this. Some people can’t be arsed to build the infrastructure, but those people would never use minecarts anyways. Some people want a mass of features, but I feel that the community can’t push changes in the form of dozens of features; they just need to pick one or two that matter and push those. I cite honey blocks, tnt improvements, and autocrafting as examples of this.

Somewhat unrelated to the content: I love your style! It’s very reminiscent of the mc content I used to watch back in 2015-2016, and it’s really cool to see that kind of video style again.

Maybe right clicking rails could changes its orientation like an item frame. Having a rail that can switch between different states depending on redstone power input would also be cool.

Linking minecarts together to form a train is already a vanilla feature in the game, but it has some major flaws such as not handling corners well and it's so obscure that not many players even know it exists. It could certainly use an overhaul.

Unsure how exactly, but Etho and Tango have developed a server wide mail system on the Hermitcraft server that uses custome post stamps to determine where a minecart travels. It sounds similar to what you were attempting to do so it’s probably worth having a look.

i havent even started watching this video and i can already tell its gonna be good

Back in the beta, I invested all the iron I mined into rails. Sprinting wasn’t a thing back before beta 1.8 so the difference between walking and minecarts was massive. Nowadays I only use them for stationary devices. They are really useful for autosmelters, farms, etc., especially after the recent changes. But I miss using minecarts for actual transportation. Elytras and shulker boxes have made them almost completely redundant in that department.

You could solve the minecart chunk loader by using a new set of rails. Kinda like an activator rail, but a chunk loader rail. When building your rail line just use a loader rail every 16 blocks.

chunk loading furnace minecarts would make sense if they only did so when powered. That way, you can give it a goal block, it will travel a set distance, and you know it will get to its destination. Yet, because it still requires manual interaction, would not be placed everywhere, and portal loaders would remain the better mechanic for that.

i think the furnace acting as a chunk loader is a really cool idea! it could be sort of like a nether portal, only loading a few chunks, but having a way to transport items unattended without water streams is really cool. it would also make single dimension chunk loaders viable in all dimensions, which would be cool. i'm curious what your opinion is on how they should handle when a world is fully unloaded then reloaded. imo the loading shouldn't persist, the player should have to check their rail systems to restart them, but i can see arguments for either method

I actually built a very similar system to your abandoned project, but I used chest minecarts and a ticket system where you place a certain amount of ticket items in your chest minecart, letting you travel to virtually any station in the line while being completely afk. Each direction on a line would have their own ticket name, and you could build multiple lines with interchanges, giving you a lot of freedom to travel by rail completely autonomously. When you ran out of tickets it would deposit you and your chest minecart at a station. Empty minecarts are very light and lose momentum too easily which makes them unusable, but if all the minecarts were either chest or player minecarts they would work fine enough. I got it working on a realms but only made two working stops before getting bored and abandoning the project.

I remember thinking using minecarts for basically afk nether highways would be good. Mostly because I didn't want to bother with farming ice and replacing the entire floor. However, I quickly found that adding extra branches to the highways made life extremely difficult. I'd either need to create a whole new track that potentially crossed over a pre existing one or stop the minecart completely at every junction and manually choose a direction. Both of these defeat the entire purpose of the minecart track and, in my next worlds, I just did the ice grind. A way to set your destination at the start of the track would be great but idk how you'd do that without miles of redstone.

On our private server we made minecarts load chunks in a whitelisted areas, built one big loop and used item filters in chest minecarts to do addressing to shoot off from that main loop. Not for human transport but for item transport. mail, automated shops, getting items from on farm storage. Carts separating isn't an issue since you only send single chest minecarts. Making minecarts travel through unloaded chunks single-handedly opened up so many new gameplay opportunities and infrastructure. That change alone make them a worthwhile item in the game

Great video, always wanted to see someone address this issue. Another cool mechanic would be to add a throttle and a GUI to a furnace minecart, and raise its speed. You could control it by holding W or S, and pressing these buttons would make them speed up or slow down. Mojang could also implement some wooden tracks for slower-speed Minecarts, which would be great for early game transportation. Also a suggestion, the intersection track may not work well with the train mechanic as unless it applied to all carts in a train, the train would separate over the junction. Maybe instead have a dedicated switch block that can route trains. This switch block would be a separate thing from the "powered curved rail" T junction, and you could use powered rails and these switches to let you stop and line your route through the junction.

Love your videos man! Glad you're getting more recognition!

For the furnace being a chunk loader, make it so only when it has fuel does it load chunks, that limits it in a way that makes sense and also prevents mass chunk loading. Also it stops when out of power so. But yeah in addition to everything you said I think we need the obvious faster minecart and innovation that horses and shulker boxes don't have. Like mass transportation, or Redstone capability, or liquid transportation, anything like that and you've got me hooked

9:18 I like that it has different results, makes it easier to separate chess minecart from normal ones

The minecraft furnace as a chunk loader would be such an awesome feature in single player

Another good tweak would be making the recipes cheaper (like using nuggets instead of full ingots) that way it be more viable earlier, and still be an interesting material to use late game, also I think the cross switch should change its direction based on the signal strength it's receiving, making it easier to automate track based transport systems.