DETECTOR RAIL

Crafting Recipe

6 Iron Ingots + 1 Stone Pressure Plate + 1 Redstone Dust → 6 Detector Rails

How to craft Detector Rail, laid out on Crafting

Signal Behavior

What Detector Rail costs you on the crafting grid, exactly

The 3x3 pattern that makes Detector Rail

Empty square in the Detector Rail recipe

One craft of Detector Rail, item by item

Detector Rail is built from	Squares it fills
Iron Ingot	6
Redstone	1
Stone Pressure Plate	1
Detector Rail you end up with	6

Taken from the Detector Rail crafting recipe in Java Edition 26.2.

Start here: what a Detector Rail is and what it does

A rail that outputs a redstone signal when a minecart passes over it. Comparator can read the contents of container minecarts. Signal lasts while minecart is on the rail.

As a trigger it watches the world for an event and converts that event into a redstone signal. It is the station sensor of rail systems, detecting carts and reading container minecarts.

Since Beta 1.5 the Detector Rail has been part of redstone, and Java Edition 26.2 is the version described here.

How the Detector Rail reads and answers a redstone signal

Input for the Detector Rail means minecart presence on rail, and the output is signal strength 15 (or container fullness via comparator).

It outputs signal 15 the whole time a minecart sits on that specific rail block, and a comparator placed against it instead reads the fullness of a container minecart passing over. The signal ends the moment the cart leaves that one rail.

Strength 15 at the source means the last powered piece of dust sits 15 blocks away from the Detector Rail, and the one after it stays dark.

Which of the 2 states the Detector Rail happens to be in changes the answer it gives, so keep track of them: binary detection and analog container reading via comparator.

How to set up the Detector Rail

1. 1Craft the Detector Rail: 6 Iron Ingots + 1 Stone Pressure Plate + 1 Redstone Dust → 6 Detector Rails.
2. 2Place the Detector Rail last of all, once you know exactly where the signal begins and where it has to end, so that its facing comes out right the very first time.
3. 3Lead the signal it produces into a repeater or dust line so the rest of your contraption can respond to the detected event.
4. 4Give it one dry run before anything else. If the Detector Rail does not do exactly what the numbers above say it should, the fault is almost always its facing or the block sitting behind it.

Jobs the Detector Rail does well

• ▸Minecart arrival detection
• ▸Station systems
• ▸Item transport monitoring
• ▸Automatic rail switching

Tips & common mistakes

• !Signal only while minecart is on the specific rail block
• !Comparator reads container fullness, not just presence
• !Only the cart on that exact rail block counts, so place it precisely at the stop point rather than somewhere along the approach.

Components that connect to Detector Rail

Follow Detector Rail further into the site through these 6 component pages:

• Redstone Dust, the Detector Rail recipe asks for 1 of these
• Stone Pressure Plate, 1 of these goes into Detector Rail
• Powered Rail, grouped with Detector Rail, 9 of them in total
• Activator Rail, another of the 9 components in this group
• Lightning Rod, sits in the same group of 9 as Detector Rail
• Jukebox, one of the 9 in the same group