I Like Trains

So I had been thinking about the different things I could do with rails while at work the other day. Something had occurred to me - I could use the same sort of system I had used for moving all of the oil from the nearby mountain to move items from Sinkhole Mine.

Cargo Unloading Room, View 1

After a few hours of finagling, I came up with what you see in the first two screenshots from this update. When a cart comes toward the village station, the brown box on the left determines whether it's a cargo cart or not. Cargo carts are shunted off into the little room, where they stop to be quickly unloaded into a half-buried chest. Then they're moved to a "boarding rail," where they wait to be launched again.

Cargo Unloading Room, View 2

Non-cargo carts, on the other hand, will continue down the normal path until they make it to the boarding rail on the right. Both sets of boarding rails are activated using the same button set into a wall between them. This allows me and a newly-emptied cargo cart to launch back toward Sinkhole Mine for more delicious item collection.

The trap-door leads to a small underground maintenance tunnel that lets me make sure the BuildCraft tubes are running smoothly from the half-buried wooden chest off to the silver chest placed in the main station. I also spent some time prettying up the railway, at least for a few blocks just outside of the station here. I've got plenty more of that work to do, let me tell you.

D'awwwwwww

Finally, while off collecting wood in the nearby tundra, I found a small oil geyser that I could have tapped long ago. I also met a new addition to the dwindling village populous. He now lives in the first floor room of my house, hanging out where I've been meaning to build some semblance of a kitchen. I will someday, I promise.

I know this update doesn't seem like much, but for a guy who gets easily confused with automated cart systems, it really feels like an accomplishment.