How to Make Trigger Switches for Mine Carts

Gather cobblestone, sticks, gold ore, redstone and iron ore. You can find and mine deposits of gold, redstone and iron deep within the earth in random locations. The other items are extremely common.

Smelt the gold and iron in a furnace to create gold and iron ingots. You can construct a furnace out of eight cobblestones and power it with wood or coal.

Construct your basic mine track out of normal rails. Six iron ingots and two sticks arranged in an "H" pattern creates 16 rails.

Build a few powered rails and add them to your mine track at an interval of one powered rail for every 38 normal rails. You can create a powered rail by replacing the iron with gold in the recipe and adding one redstone. If the track changes elevation, add more powered rails to maintain momentum going up the slope.

Dig a hole directly underneath each powered rail and add a redstone torch for permanent power. You need one torch per powered rail. Redstone torches are made by replacing the coal with redstone in the normal torch recipe.

Add a two-block high wall of any construction material at the beginning and end of your track.

Place a button on the top block of each wall. You can create a button by smelting two cobblestone in your furnace and combining the resulting solid stone into a button.

Add three more powered rails in front of each wall. Only add redstone torches to two of the rails; the rail adjacent to the wall need to be unpowered.

Create a mine cart with three iron ingots arranged in a "V" shape and place it at one end of the track.

Sit in the mine cart by approaching it and right-clicking. From this position, you can left-click the button to activate the unpowered rail and send your cart zooming at maximum speed down the track. Once the mine cart reaches the end, you can press the button on that wall to travel in the other direction. This effectively creates a two-way powered mine cart track that carries you unlimited distance.