So...I'm thinking of building a tunnel bore machine, and turning it loose to make a nice big rail tunnel, maybe west from spawn to the other island.

Now normally I'd just do stuff but in this case I don't want to unleash a grief-o-matic so I figure its important to pick a line on the map that won't hit anyone's underground lair and needs to be deep enough to go under the sea but not so deep that the access is excessively long.

Also should I try to make it high speed rail? I think I can but it'll mean kitting quite a lot.

I'm guessing this is tekkit right ? If so hotmage , Efiso and a few others are making a new tekkit spawn so hold your horses for the time being mate

Tekkit, yes I should have said so. Anyway it'll take a while for me to store up enough rails, I haven't got enough diamond yet, and I might do a short test run. Also there's a lot to railcraft, like different types of boarding rails which I can craft but I haven't figured how to use them yet, and I figure with tekkit it should be possible to have properly automated stations.

Don't worry about railcraft, I've got most of it figured, its not too bad. I also have all the machinery set up to create all of the parts required for HS rails, although the actual materials are an issue as they aint cheap. Also, Im gonna add another 18 coke ovens to the steel machine, sould speed it up from 6 mins a pop

LOL so you're using coal, not charcoal? I know that's the "correct" fuel but it seems in kinda short supply.

I seem to have used up too much of my coal making carbon plates, diamonds etc.

Anyway I'm kind of po'ed with minecraft right now due to trying to help a certain person and losing all my nano-armor when he decided to fall down the geothermal borehole I was showing him. Being a helpful kind of guy I tried to retrieve his stuff which amazingly hadn't fallen into lava. Got jumped by creepers, died and by the time I managed to get back to where I was my dropped stuff had all gone.

I'm probably going to be gathering rubber for a while anyway, crafted my first MV solar array today.

BTW have you found out the way that you can double your iron?

I use coalcoke, the upgraded coal.

Double my iron? Bar maceration, no I havent.

note: i'm not actively building new spawn, i'm just providing materials when needed.

Seems a little early for a new spawn?

well the fact we dont have a legit spawn built yet, i think its very much needed

Agreed Q

So...back to rails. Anyone know the difference between the minecart boarding rail and train boarding rail? The crafting recipie calls for a redstone repeater, does this mean it lengthens the redstone signal in order to push the whole train?

Come to think of it has anyone managed to make trains work. I tried hooking three carts together but I found I needed twice as many powered rails, it didn't go round corners well, and sometimes the carts arrived in a different order than they set out.

On the bright side I found a different way to do freight, at my "stations" I put a detector to divert chest carts into a different siding.

Oddly enough I used the same strategy in vanilla except using a head height tripwire to detect occupied carts.

Is it me or is the railcraft switch motor stupidly complex to craft compared to just running redstone wire to a curve track?

Oh well, got an item loader/item unloader combo working yesterday. I notice they include a filter function, so they've got some potential as item sorters. Right now I'm just looking at moving stuff in bulk. Just need to figure out collision avoidance.

Interesting note: I'm sure there is railcraft content that hasn't made it into the tekkit wiki. Suspended rails and gate rails for example.

Correction: It has now, I'm sure when I last tried to look this stuff up I couldn't find it but its certainly there now!!

Yep, made a set of gate rails ... cool. It certainly beats the overly complicated piston door you need in vanilla. Suspended rails too, I haven't put them to use but maybe I'll use them for an overpass sometime.

Right now I have an arse of a problem, My "freight" system has exceeded the chunk limit, meaning the cart gets stuck. Right now I'm short of ideas...short term I'll just shrink the loop maybe...

I think I'll add an unloader-chest-loader combination with separate tracks each side, and just accept that I'll have to "camp" the mine to make it work. Maybe its time for a new build.

EDIT: Yeah I'm convinced holding tracks are buggy, I'm finding they sometimes bounce carts back so unless you need the two-way function boarding track is definitely better.

Interesting note: I've played around with a controller-reciever pairing in ssp and it looks as if you can use them as an alternative to wireless redstone. The only proviso is that the controller needed a redstone trail, it wouldn't accept a direct signal from a lever or torch.

Its probably best used to "remote" a switch track.