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[PatrikLundell]

I found the distance from the magma sea up to my sand deposits a bit overlong, so I created a nether-cap minecart to carry some up to the sand. However, as soon as the cart followed the tracks into the magma to scope some up the cart vanished without a ripple. Checking the wiki, I saw nether-cap "dumped" into magma is destroyed, so apparently driving (actually pushed) through magma along tracks is considered "dumping". It seems I will have to wait until the goblins come over and donate some iron (I don't have any metals in my embark, and I doubt it would be possible to harvest a couple of hundred nether-cap logs for a pump stack without waiting for several regrowths of the nether-cap population, but I guess it might be possible to use two pumps to pump magma two levels up, deconstruct and move the lower one, pump once more... repeat ad nauseam [but even that would require another woodcutting expedition into the dangerous 3:rd cavern]).
The question part of this post is: how much magma does a mine cart scope up when driven through magma? The wiki states the capacity of a mine cart is 833 "units", but I've failed to find the relation between "units" and 7:ths of liquid depth, nor do I know how much the cart would actually pick up, which I would guess would depend on the depth of the liquid driven through. If the up to 10 units (?) of water a bucket can hold which will fill 1/7 is an indication, a mine cart ought to be capable of carrying 83.3 levels of liquid, i.e. basically fill up a 3*4 pool, which seems a bit much (although in dwarven physics, 1/7 of water freezes into ice that melts into 7/7, so it wouldn't be impossible). Obviously, I'm not too keen on dumping the mine cart contents into a single tile hole only to see most of it flood the area, destroying workshops and whatnot (as well as the hauling dwarf). Hm, would a nether-cap that somehow was loaded with magma be considered "dumped" if it dumped its contents and was caught in the spill?

[i2amroy]

IIRC minecarts haul a single 1/7 unit each time. That said are you sure that the mine cart didn't just get stuck in the lava? As I recall you have to have a certain amount of speed to make it back out the other side of the lava and if you don't have enough you will get stuck in the middle.

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, I'm sure it wasn't stuck. I carefully checked both the two track tiles through the lava as well as all the other tiles inside my drawbridge (in case some freak current had swept it away), but no, 'k' didn't releal anything, nor did visual inspection (and I looked at the lava level, not the one above).
1/7 depth matches what I think I've seen somewhere, and it's also the reason I made two minecarts, as I believe lava doesn't evaporate while inside a cart. Thus, hauling both of them to the target and dumping them at the same time should eliminate the evaporation issue.

Thanks for the answer.

[Larix]

One load of fluid is worth 2/7 depth. That's even documented in the wiki:

A minecart will hold enough fluid to increase the depth of a single tile by 2.

If you have any available (e.g. imported cages from human and dwarven caravans), nickel is also a magma-proof metal.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks Larix!

I've intentionally avoided trading for any metal except pewter (needed to avoid losing dwarves to strange moods), as I want to see how I fare using only invader donated metal (plus candy, when I've secured the third cavern). Well, I also have the standard embark metal, i.e. two picks and two axes => two miners + 1 woodcutter leaves one weapon for military use. I'm working on securing obsidian for obsidian "swords", however.