Minecart with Furnace (2024)

A minecart with furnace is a furnace inside a minecart. It can be powered with coal or charcoal to propel it across a rail line for a limited time, which can be used to move other minecarts.

Obtaining[]

Minecarts with furnace can be retrieved by attacking them, and by doing so it drops as an item.

Crafting[]

Usage[]

Minecarts with furnaces are placed in the same way as other minecarts. It does not have a graphical user interface, unlike a furnace.

Minecarts with furnaces can be powered, done by feeding fuel (coal or charcoal) into the furnace minecart with the use button. The fuel is consumed immediately and it starts to move in the same direction the player clicked toward. Pressing use always turns it to that direction, even when not holding coal.

Any piece of fuel, added at any time, increases the total range by an additional 3600 ticks (equal to 180 seconds or 3 minutes). The upper limit is 32767 ticks, approximately 27 minutes.

When powered, minecarts with furnaces cover 240m per minute (about 4m/s, slightly slower than walking speed) or 720m per piece of coal. They do not accelerate beyond this speed when going downhill or on active powered rails, and as long as they remain powered, they do not slow down when going uphill, on inactive powered rails, or when pushing or pulling other minecarts.

If a powered furnace minecart is derailed and then pushed back onto a rail, it starts moving again in the direction it came from, so they are not easily turned around in this state unless a player is nearby to redirect it with use.

Minecarts with furnaces can climb up steep inclines while pushing other minecarts as long as they have fuel. If a minecart with furnace reaches a slope while pulling another minecart, the pulled minecart is switched to the forward position so that it can be pushed along the slope instead of pulled.

When a minecart with furnace bumps into another minecart or multiple minecarts, the other minecarts are pushed forward with great speed. The furnace minecart continues on with its own speed. Because of this speed difference, some of the minecarts may end up inside unloaded chunks on straight tracks.

Train mechanics[]

A furnace minecart can be made to pull up to four other minecarts. All minecarts in this train move at the constant speed of the furnace minecart. Trains are formed when a minecart is pushed into the back of a powered furnace minecart or a short-enough train. These shunts are fragile at best and easily come undone, but some methods are stronger than others. For example, pushing a minecart into a furnace minecart and then powering the furnace gives a weaker shunt than pushing the furnace minecart into the other minecart against a wall, and then powering the furnace in the other direction.

A high-speed minecart running into the back of a furnace minecart going in the same direction automatically creates a weak shunt with it, pulling it along.

Pulling a minecart with TNT causes it to explode.

When a train comes to a turn, the shunt comes undone with the pulled minecart jettisoned backward. The correct way to make such a turn is having the shunt undone before a turn, and then make the two rejoin on a straight rail later by having the pulled cart catch up with the minecart with furnace.^[1]

Since the train runs slower on a fully powered track than a normal minecart (~5 m/s compared to 8m/s), a train pulled by an unpowered furnace minecart is ideal for AFK farms involving breaking or placing blocks like nether wart.^[1]

Properties[]

The coal is not stored as an item in the entity, but in the object data in the fuel property as a time in ticks. Fuel is a short value, i.e. a maximum of 32767 ticks, which is about 27 minutes. However, /summon furnace_minecart ~ ~ ~ {Fuel:32000} alone doesn't make it go since it doesn't have a direction. It can be right-clicked on a track to give it a direction, or it can be summoned with the properties PushX and PushZ set, which are responsible for the direction. The Motion property of every entity allows for movement of the minecart, but it does not direct the minecart to move on its own.

Sounds[]

Java Edition:
Minecarts with furnaces use the Friendly Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.^{[sound 1]}

Bedrock Edition:

Data values[]

ID[]

Entity data[]

Minecarts with furnace have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

History[]

Java Edition Alpha
v1.0.14					Minecarts with furnace were added.
					Since no in-game name was indicated, they were referred to by names such as "powered minecart" or "furnace minecart".
					No matter how much fuel was added to the minecart, it would never move for more than 3 minutes after the last fuel.
Java Edition Beta
1.0					When tooltips were added to items in inventory, this was named "Minecart with Furnace".
1.2					The texture of the minecart with furnace has been changed.
Java Edition
1.0.0		?			Each piece of coal now powers a minecart with furnace for 3 minutes (3600 game ticks), so that adding another piece of coal at any time increases the total range by another 3 minutes. A full stack of 64 coal now powers it for 192 minutes (230400 game ticks).
					Minecarts with furnace on a level track cover 204 meters per minute.
1.8		14w11a			Minecarts with furnace now give a much greater boost to other minecarts.
					When powered, minecarts with furnace now move on non-powered rails without decelerating.
		14w17a			Minecarts with furnace's behavior has been reverted, so that no change was released in Java Edition 1.8.
1.11		16w32a			The entity ID of the minecart with furnace has been changed from MinecartFurnace to furnace_minecart.
1.13		17w47a			Prior to The Flattening, this item's numeral ID was 343.
1.14		18w43a			The texture of the minecart with furnace has been changed.
1.15		19w38a			The furnace now appears dark, like suffocating mobs.
		19w39a			The furnace texture is now colored correctly.
1.15.2		Pre-Release 1			Furnace minecarts can now navigate around any corner.
1.19		22w13a			The crafting recipe for a minecart with furnace is now shapeless.
					Breaking a minecart with furnace will now drop the item instead of the minecart and furnace separately.[2]
Legacy Console Edition
TU1	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added minecart with furnace.
PlayStation 4 Edition
1.90					The texture of the minecart with furnace has been changed.

Issues[]

Issues relating to "Minecart with Furnace" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia[]

• The minecart with furnace is excluded from Bedrock and New Nintendo 3DS editions on purpose. In a tweet, Jeb considered removing it from Java Edition.^[3]
  • When converting a Legacy Console Edition world to a Bedrock Edition world, any present minecarts with furnaces are converted into a normal minecart.
  • Despite the above-described poor standing of the minecart, it was most recently briefly featured in an animation in the Minecraft Live 2022, where one was depicted as moving a train of about 20 minecarts at a higher than normal speed.

Gallery[]

• 

  A powered minecart in action.

References[]