Lets Build a Railway
This page is a guide on building railways, if you want a list of railways head to the Railways wiki page.
Planning, Construction, and Operation: A guide in railway making
Planning
The first step in making your railway is planning. This stage when done properly will save you time in the future when it comes to construction. Firstly, you want to know where point A & B are on your railway, where's it going and where it'll stop. Who's bases and towns are in the way? When you have an idea of where you are going, follow the rough route you want to take a note any builds you encounter, as this will be important information in the next step. Do you want a sky railway or ground based line? Craftbook, redstone, or manual station operations? These are all things to think about while planning and discussing with other people working on, or who will be connected to, your railway line.
A good tool to use while planning is the world map, your second step should be to find out:
- Where your line's stops are at
- What is in the way of the your line, and how can you avoid it?
Below is three examples of an imaginary railway that connects point A and point B; followed by three descriptions of each railway plan.
- Left/Red: Terrible railway planning, that just cuts right through a large build with no care for where it goes. Could very well get you banned for addition grief.
- Centre/Yellow: Decent railway planning, you go around the build. But have you asked the build owner if they want a station? This is a rather big line, maybe contact the owner of this place.
- Right/Green: Good railway planning, you contacted the owner of the build in the way of point A and B, and he agreed to have a station made in his build. It's an efficient line and everybody is happy in the end.
When your rough route is planned out, you can move to the next stage, on-ground surveying and build/land permissions.
Not griefing & getting land perms
So you go and check out the route's location, finding that there's a building or two in the way. You don't know who made them, so let's look at the some of the options you have regarding them.
- 1) Reroute the track plans to go around the building. This is the easiest thing to do, make sure your railway is a far enough distance away that it won't really affect them so that it's not considered grief. Try to contact the owner if possible (view other options for how to do that) and ask around if anyone knows them.
- 2) If you cannot reroute the plans for whatever reason you must find the build's owner and get permissions. There are a few great commands and methods you can use to get that information, listed below:
| Command | Command function |
|---|---|
| /wholiveshere | Shows the player homes within a 50m radius. |
| /nearestplace | Shows the nearest place with a map link or wiki page. |
| /nearestplayer | Shows the nearest player to use, sometimes they may know who built what. |
| /mail (player-name) (message) | If a player doesn't have Discord, but you need to talk to them, you may be able to contact them via /mail. |
| /banwhy (player-name) | Shows why a player has been banned. |
| /lastseen (player-name) | Shows when a player was last online. |
| /timeplayed (player-name) | Shows the player's online time. |
If none of these commands work, you will need to contact an admin to find out who built something. If a player turns out to be banned, you will have to contact an admin, as MinecraftOnline policy is that admins own the builds of banned players, and the banned players themselves cannot give permission to modify their former builds unless they are unbanned. If they are unbanned, make sure to leave signs giving them options, like adding a station or rerouting the line. Make sure your railway is still out of the way and prepare for someone to ask you to move it.
If you don't ask for permissions you could end up like 
George_Mann, who got overzealous while building highways and cut through multiple people's builds. George was banned in August 2023 for Grief.
Construction
Note: People don't normally like sky railways and really absurdly large sky highways, so talk to local build owners before you start building to minimize drama.
Railway Types
Theres three common types of railways you can build with their own pros and cons.
- Skyroad/SkyTrain
The sky road style railways, these railways are the most visible and most efficient to build. They float upwards of 100m above ground level and are cheap to build and provide fast and direct service. Skytrains are also eyesores, people do complain about them so they're not very popular with a lot of players if you ask around. This is the main type of rail used by the Freedonia Railway System
- Ground Rail
Ground rail is a type of railway that's on or close to the ground. These railways are difficult to build and require lots of materials. They weave around terrain a bit and provide a very scenic ride. These are closely related to the railways you see in real life. Groups like the Spawn Continental Railway and the defunct Oaktown - AnnaHeim railway use ground railways.
- Subways
Subways are common in urban areas. A subway will be underground and hidden from the general public. This type of rail also takes a long time to build. They are almost entirely underground, so a subway requires a lot of digging, so prepare to spend a lot of diamonds on tools.
Track Gauge(s)
Railway track gauges are different across many railways. The gauge is the measurement between powered and regular rails. For example, the FRS uses 9:3 gauge track while the SCR uses 10:2 gauge. So for the FRS 3 powered rails for every 9 regular rails, while the SCR uses 2 powered rails for every 10 regular rails. Rail gauges differ between the many rail companies on the server. There's also the lesser known but somewhat common 1:1:1:20 gauge which uses 2 detector rails, 1 powered, and 20 regular rails. For beginner railways a more commonly seen gauge is 1:x which is a single track gauge that varies in length but uses a single powered rail for most areas. Below is a chart of the gauges.
| Gauge | Detector Rails | Powered Rails | Normal Rails |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:9 | 0 | 3 | 9 |
| 2:10 | 0 | 2 | 10 |
| 1:1:1:20 | 2 | 1 | 20 |
| 1:6 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 1:x | ~0 (number varies) | ~1 | # (number varies) |
| 3:8 | 0 | 3 | 8 |
The four most common railway gauges side by side.
SCR 2:10 gauge track inside of Kanal Town.
Craftbook and Vanilla railways
There are two main types of railways, Craftbook (which sometimes utilizes commands to operate), and Vanilla which requires no command input.
Vanilla Railways
Vanillia railways utilize rail blocks and their redstone functions to move players around. Below is a list of blocks and functions.
- Examples
Craftbook
Craftbook railways are the most common in Freedonia. Railways such as the Marques Railway, Pheonix Isle Subway, and FRS use Craftbook. The primary use of Craftbook is to make stations, launchers, and cart launchers. These use a mix of different wool blocks and obsidian with signs below them. Craftbook has a learning curve, however there are multiple example builds using it across the server, so you can learn how it works. See: CartCraft, Craftbook Museum, Craftbook.
- Cartsorts
Cartsorts are by far the most important part of any craftbook based railway. Cartsorts use netherrack and a sign to activate. Cartsorts will sort trains based off which station they are going to via the /st command. Make sure when building that the netherrack and sign are staggered from the actual sort like on the second example.
- Note: /st is COMPELTELY reliant on cartsorts, so if you want your stop to be accessible via /st, you MUST have it set up to the name of your station that fits on a line of a sign with a # in front of it.
- Editor's Note: The Craftbook Museum is incredibly useful for learning rail Craftbook! There are examples in the back of the museum and minecarts are provided. If you need any assistance or are unsure, ask one of the many railway builders on MCO.
Wiki Additions
Making a page for your line
You can make a page for your organization or railway line using the Organisation Template or the Building template (with Infrastructure category), respectively.
MCO Livemap
In order to add your railway to the live map, you must add the line's data. You can do this with the following template either manually while manually writing down coords when riding your route or via a macro command. You can find a tutorial and template linked down below.