Laying the tracks

I took a look at my iron supply and I've got enough to start work on my railway. My first step is to smooth the hill down the side of my mountain. I've seen other people's mine carts and it appears that tracks can only go up one block at a time. Here's my ramp:

After that it was pretty easy to lay down the first tracks and build a powered mine cart. I sent it up by itself just to make sure everything was good.

After that first set of tracks I realized I was going to need a lot more iron so I went investigating.

I eventually found a sandy pond where the water appeared to be flowing somewhere. I plugged up the source of the water and found a good-sized cave. I explored a little bit and eventually found some iron ore in the ceiling. Score!

I started digging it away paying no mind to the sand above my head. As it turns out, that was a very bad idea. Somehow the iron was holding the sand in place and when I took it out I was buried in a cave-in. Turns out that's not a very exciting screenshot:

Well. I survived that. Time to take my newly acquired ore home and build some train tracks. Oh... except it's night time and there's an army of skeletal archers outside! I'd have a screenshot of that but I didn't want to get killed.

I killed about 4 during the night, but by then my health was so low that I decided to let the sun burn the rest. In the morning I killed a pig for its bacon and walked home.