Minecart Cargo Spur Line

While playing around in my test world, I developed a system for sorting occupied minecarts from storage carts and other "empty" carts. It's pretty simple and works by utilizing the difference in momentum between empty and full carts. I used it to build a station in one of my mines that has separate arrival tracks for storage carts and rider-filled carts. It seems to work pretty well.



Here's the setup in my test world. Ignore the weird bend on the lower track and the hole above the center track. Those were both the result of tinkering and are not important to the final product. Anyway, each of the powered rails have 5 tracks between them. and the repeater is set to the slowest setting. The exact delay varies depending on your track configuration. My station in the Klourthian mines uses two repeaters to get the timing right, but I can't imagine needing more than that. The idea is that occupied carts reach the "Y" in the track at the same time as the signal from the detector rail. The slower storage carts, however, don't get there until the "Y" has switched back to normal.

The detector rail on the lower spur temporarily switches the Y to the correct configuration for outbound carts.

Depending on space, I'm sure you could set the two spurs up with two way piston stations. One way could be outbound while the other sends carts to a Pez dispenser so they could be called later.

Nice work Vinz. This looks like it will be pretty useful.