Coming Along

Well, the heavy construction is done. In the evenings, the monsters can gather on my glass ceiling and cry that they can't come inside my train station to eat me.

Meanwhile, I'll be safe below. Stopping for only a second or two while I select my ultimate destination.

Of course, most of the destination buttons don't work. I have a couple of tunnels to carve out and I have a whole lot of wiring to do, but everything looks good.

And as long as you're only travelling between the beach station and my floating island, you're totally set. Soon though you'll be able to also choose between all major destinations in either direction. Thanks to this guy for the inspiration and technical details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvSsSE6MueM

Nearing completion

The Trouble with Trains

I don't know how much time I spent trying to get an automated train system working at my respawn station, but it's a lot. Building the delivery part was easy, but I found that I sometimes missed the cart as it flew by the front door which was irritating. I tried to build a system to force the cart back around if I wasn't in it... but that didn't work very well. The system kept getting more and more complicated until it looked like this:

Eventually I'd had enough. I removed the automated delivery system and the "come back if empty loop". I figured I could just push the train down a chute from inside the station and hop inside. That made things much easier... although it doesn't look that much less complex on the surface:

With that taken care of, I was free to move along the length of track making it difficult for monsters and animals from getting on the tracks. I built boosters in every cave for both directions and finally finished off the massive hill bridge that had begun this whole project:

Now the only thing left to do was to add safety lighting to prevent monsters from appearing too close to the tracks. I got that finished and in the near future I'll take a test trip at night to see if I can make it without being killed. I think I'll be okay.

I wonder what I'll do next to entertain myself?

Skytrain

Well, it's done. I've elevated my entire track. It took a bunch of work, but I should be somewhat safer from monsters and general animal interruption now. It also looks a lot more impressive than it did before:

Once again, when the track was all finished and ready to go, I took a test ride. I made it all the way from my respawn train station to the base of my enormous uphill aqueduct and then the train stopped. I turned around and  saw that my train engine had run out of coal! This was highly unexpected. Everything I'd seen so far had made me believe that the train would continue to run endlessly. I guess I was being naive.
This is going to cause some problems for me.
1. My automatic system at the respawn train station requires that the trains be powered. If my engine runs out of steam while it's waiting for an occupant, it won't be auto-delivered. That's not a huge deal, but it's not great.
2. Powered mine carts will travel in the direction you're facing when you feed them more coal... but they can only push other carts. This means during my trips I'm going to be in front of the engine. If my engine stops part way through my trip I'm going to have to get out and re-power the engine. But with my new elevated track, that's going to be a problem. I mean, look how long this thing is!

So, I guess I'm going to have to break down and utilize some of the game's glitches to do what I need done. There's something called mine cart boosting which allows me to use other mine carts on parallel tracks to power my mine cart. This is what my first booster station looks like:

This is in the cave behind the waterfall. It provides one track with boost for each direction. It's impossible to explain in pictures and text, but this video explains things comprehensively.

I'm going to need a lot more iron for train tracks.

Tracks finished!

I finished laying the tracks for my railway. I started building a railway station at my "respawn point" and devised an automated cart delivery system. In an ideal world, every time I respawn there will be a train waiting to take me back to my floating castle. However, this world isn't ideal.

I knew I'd have to do something about all the animals at some point. They seem to be abnormally attracted to the train tracks. Rather than being crushed if they're hit by my train, they just stop progress. This was my biggest worry as I took my very first train trip from beach to castle.

The sun was setting as I left, and by the time I reached the waterfall tunnel it was dark.

What comes out of the dark? Oh yeah, monsters. Skeletal archers, actually... about five of them.

I wasn't too worried at first. It seemed like they were having trouble hitting a moving target, but as I emerged from one of my many tunnels, an archer somewhere above me hit me with several arrows and killed me.

As soon as it was light, I ran out to where I had died. All my gear was gone, and so was the train engine - only the passenger car remained. I searched all along the track and didn't find it. I think I'm going to have to elevate my tracks and provide some sort of protection for myself.