The Hiatus and Ground Both Broken

Rail Station - Old Concept

After a long time away from NameWorld - and the game itself - a friend asked me to play some Minecraft on the X-Box 360. We only played for a short while before I suggested he try to set up a multiplayer server just for the two of us on the PC. We enjoyed that for a while, and it seems to have gotten me back into the mood to play the game itself.

I hadn't been sure what I would do when I came back to NameWorld. I had a few projects I had meant to continue work on, like the church or the continuing work digging out Sinkhole Mine, but it was the railway that brought me back. I first got into Minecraft itself because I saw some YouTube videos online showing off the newly-added mine carts and rails. I've always loved trains, but I'm never terribly good at designing systems of moving carts from one track to another, or building automated stations with redstone circuitry.

Rail Station - New Concept

I had built a rail station before, as shown in the above image. I liked the idea, that there was a small station on the first floor, and that the tracks would be elevated. The only problem is that making ninety-degree turns with suspended track just doesn't sit well with me. So I gave it some thought and came up with this new design, as shown to the left.

Rail Station - Interior

This way, the station itself is slightly above the street level, and the rails are below ground to an extent. They still poke out a bit most of the time, allowing the light from the track to help serve as a landmark if I were to ever get lost. All I'd need to do is find some of the half-buried railway and follow it to a station. Given that the village I live in is a bit above sea-level, this also means that the rails will occasionally spend time as suspended lengths of track, or bridges across bodies of water.

Construction of Departing Railways Begins

I'm going with my old idea of how to make the rails work, despite having all the interesting signalling systems that come with RailCraft. Each rail line will lead to one particular destination. The one on the left will go between this station and Sinkhole Mine. The one on the right will go between this station and a "secret facility" project I'm thinking of building off in the desert.

Anyway, that's what I've built so far. Another idea I've had is to build sort of.. auxiliary power stations throughout the village. All connected by IndustrialCraft wires, they'd be a way of quickly recharging my equipment without having to go all the way back into the basement of my home. I haven't done any work on that yet, but if I decide to go ahead with it I'll be sure to take some screenshots.