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[MVladO]

I want to build a magma forge close to my fortress upper levels.  I have carved a minecart track to transport flux stone from deeper levels (which doesn't work for now but that's another story) which later I wish to power with rollers instead of exploity impulse ramps. I have discovered magma pool few levels above flux stone layers, which I also need to transport up. I'm thinking about using the same track. My question is what would be your approach?
1) merging different cart lines is impossible/ too dangerous, never do it even for a while - carve separate track up instead.
2) merging lines would be time efficient,  but don't use them at the same time, (please tell me what technology/buildings/tracks/shutes would you use to merge them, I'm new to this)
3) I can easily setup two separate lines working simultaneously, but not going back two-ways because they would crash
4) yeah I can easily set up minecarts from different lines to utilize the same tracks both ways and never crash, I will tell you how!

[PatrikLundell]

Since you only need a few cart loads of magma to power facilities and each pair of carts would be sent to a different hole, I'd let dorfs carry those up.

When I used cart tracks I used a circular route that had the downwards part being a chute where carts landed on a ramp to roll to their bottom destination to be loaded and sent upwards. In my configuration the chute is in the center of a spiral upwards track powered by impulse ramps (but I've used powered rollers once).

You can't really use the same track for upwards and downwards traffic at the same time, as carts would collide, and if you use powered carts (as opposed to pushed/guided ones) the power would block downwards traffic unless you engineered it such that the power was disabled for the downwards trip.

I believe pushed/guided carts can reach different destinations using the same track by having the dorf select which track branch to take, but if you use powered carts you'd have to set up a control system that configures the route such that the desired destination is reached. I've never done that myself, but I believe that if you have different starting points for the routes you could engineer a system where the cart passed over a pressure plate that cause the route to be reconfigured. Since a pressure plate alone will just return to its previous state once the cart has passed over it, you'd have to have it trigger something that actually maintains a different state (such as pushing a mine cart onto a pressure plate and stay there, or push a mine cart off a pressure plate, possibly using rollers and two mine carts with different weight such that one triggers the pressure plate and the other one doesn't: I've never tried anything like that myself, though). You can reconfigure mine cart tracks by using drawbridges that cover or reveal turning tracks to determine whether a mine cart will go straight ahead or turn, alternatively have a turning track in front of a raising drawbridge and have the mine cart move too fast to turn unless "assisted" by running into the raised drawbridge (again, I haven't tried this myself).

[DoubleG]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144328.0&fbclid=IwAR1KinGgjGJ65k0uMVKIJCqf1FZeh1MG3YoktnUWgbtjqPD77wT0j17KWcA

This thread seems v handy. Haven't built my minecart system yet but I'm using this as a resource for the planning.

[Fleeting Frames]

    I've done merging/splitting tracks before in Dwarf Fortress together. Key bits there were same fully loaded destination and different weight empty carts triggering their respective plates to switch track.

In general, merging lines to 1 destination is fairly easy. But for magma carts I'd go with either pushed on separate track, carried by wheelbarrow or by hand. Guiding up a ramp and getting interrupted by thirst is recipe for fun.