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[BaronessRigby]

Long time lurker yada yada yada...

I have some magma furnaces etc down at the magma sea (or rather in this fort, off a depressingly short magma tube) connected to a workshop level much closer to the surface via a ~80 Z-level minecart track. This works great when set to 'guide' but this is a bit tedious - I want my dwarfs to ride!

The problem I have (and which I have had in every previous fort I have tried this, whatever design I go for) is that minecarts pick up speed so fast that after a certain number of down ramps they stop following the ramps and sail off into the open air - quickly hitting the ceiling as it comes down. A rough side view, omitting corners and with not-to-scale lengths:

Code: [Select]

██████████████████
      ████████████
███▲       ███████
████████▲         
██████████████████

...causes the minecart to follow the dotted line, until it has an accident at the X and has to be carried to its destination (with or without its contents):

Code: [Select]

███████████████
....  █████████
███.......X████
████████▲     
███████████████

This is highly sub-optimal. How do I design a minecart track that can safely traverse multiple Z-levels unpowered? Do I just need to put in speed traps at every level? That would be extremely tedious, so I don't really want to if I don't have to.

[askovdk]

I once had a long spinal cart track going up and down a fort, and my solution was indeed lots of high friction track stops on the way down.
However, I seem to remember, that you can let a cart fall vertically, and if it lands on a track, then it shouldn’t count as a derail.
So I guess I would try a setup where the cart comes to a stop on a floor hatch, that has just been triggered to open by a pressure plate on the track. The cart should then be dropping down on a track with active rollers that let it continue. It could be worth the try at least.

As you probably know, free running carts often results in a dead cat on the track, then a dead corpse collector, then two dead corpse collectors, etc. So I strongly recommend to keep as much of the free running tracks completely isolated from the rest of the fort with pressure plate controlled doors at the stations.

[mightymushroom]

I don't think a free-fall solution works here. The OP specifies wanting dwarfs to ride in the minecarts, and the wiki article on minecarts says that riding dwarves do take fall damage as normal.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Reading the wiki, it appears that you need to ensure that the minecart’s speed is below 50000 (aka “derail speed).  To do this you need to slow it down using track stops.  I don’t think you need a track stop on every z-level.  You only need enough to keep the speed below 50000.

[Bumber]

I don't think a free-fall solution works here. The OP specifies wanting dwarfs to ride in the minecarts, and the wiki article on minecarts says that riding dwarves do take fall damage as normal.

Pushing was given as an option in thread title.

I think you could also drop it straight down onto a ramp then have it move sideways to the track stop. I forget how much falling speed is conserved, so you might need to slow it down first.

[BaronessRigby]

Thanks for the tips all - I'll have to do some more testing when 0.50.01 is out!