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[fourpotatoes]

I have no idea what happens if one cart, say, crashed into another that is stopped in the "station".

It'll transfer its momentum to the other cart, as in a Newton's cradle. If you don't have anything stopping it, the stopped cart will start off down the track. Doing this deliberately would let you get a cart out of a station even if every dwarf in that area is dead or incapacitated.

My only multiple-minecart/same-track experience is with logic circuits, not hauling routes, but my understanding is you'd have to define a separate hauling route for each cart to have dwarves manually load & unload it. It'd be tedious to set up, but after that it should look after itself.

[omega_dwarf]

I figure I wouldn't block dwarves from being able to get in/out, just make it so they don't need to be.

Really, what I want is simply for jobs not to be taken by dwarves who are, for one reason or another, on the opposite end of the fortress, which plagues my dwarven settlements no matter how efficient the layout seems in theory. I thought maybe if I could both supply dwarves in any given section with whatever they need, and transfer stuff between sections, all without significant walking around, then dwarves wouldn't have any reason to be on the opposite side of the fort in the first place. Maybe it's not minecarts that are the key, but rather burrows?

Burrows would be so. Much. Easier. With use of some dedicated haulers, and some minecart hauling routes in addition to that, you can have the whole thing done quite quickly.

The minecarts I would recommend only for things like stone/ore, wood, and other heavily-bulk goods. All other can be accomplished almost as quickly with wheelbarrows, bins (but don't use bins), and the occasional random unaided hauling job.

[Spitemaster]

You could do it with a central load/unload area, and threeish sets of tracks (although you do have to actually separate the dwarves for this to work, I think):

The first set of tracks is tricky.  You want one output loop from each production area.  It would just deposit all of the output of one area into a stockpile in another area, though for some it might be more efficient to have more tahn one output loop instead of chaining outputs.  Food production areas would send all their output to the load/unload area.

The second set is for food and the third is for drinks.  In each production area, there is one minecart for each of these tracks.  When the minecart enters a
production area, it passes over a track stop that dumps its load and then sits on a hatch cover.  When the dwarf goes to pick up the food/drink and move it to the stockpile for the production area, it steps on a pressure plate that releases the cart to the load/unload area.
In the load/unload area, the carts simply stack up, waiting to be filled.  You'd need one per production area, and the same number of routes each with a single stop.  The dwarf in the loading area would load one item in the cart and send it on its way.  In order for the carts to visit all the production areas, build a logical latch for each of the production areas - when a cart enters the area, it sets the latch and prevents carts from entering, and when the cart exits it resets the latch and allows them to enter again.

The load/unload area would take care of raw resources - stone, wood, plants gathered from outside, as well as trading.

[Cobbler89]

I figure I wouldn't block dwarves from being able to get in/out, just make it so they don't need to be.

Really, what I want is simply for jobs not to be taken by dwarves who are, for one reason or another, on the opposite end of the fortress, which plagues my dwarven settlements no matter how efficient the layout seems in theory. I thought maybe if I could both supply dwarves in any given section with whatever they need, and transfer stuff between sections, all without significant walking around, then dwarves wouldn't have any reason to be on the opposite side of the fort in the first place. Maybe it's not minecarts that are the key, but rather burrows?

Burrows would be so. Much. Easier. With use of some dedicated haulers, and some minecart hauling routes in addition to that, you can have the whole thing done quite quickly.

The minecarts I would recommend only for things like stone/ore, wood, and other heavily-bulk goods. All other can be accomplished almost as quickly with wheelbarrows, bins (but don't use bins), and the occasional random unaided hauling job.

Here's a question -- has the thing been fixed where wheelbarrows accumulate items that are, then, unusable whenever the wheelbarrow is in use? Because that seemed at least as bad as bins last I tried using wheelbarrows... but I haven't tried in a while.

[omega_dwarf]

The load/unload area would take care of raw resources - stone, wood, plants gathered from outside, as well as trading.

What do you mean by this?

Also, with a circular track, you could definitely combine food and drink and the return of empty barrels, seeds, etc. - why do you propose two separate tracks, one for food, and one for drinks?

[Spitemaster]

If you've got one for food and one for drinks, you can ensure that each area always has exactly one stack of each.

[omega_dwarf]

Couldn't you also do that with two track stops and two stockpiles (within the same block)?