Will a storage minecart keep going through chunks that aren't loaded?

Question

My house is located some 38,000 blocks away from the house of another player on my SMP world. We are planning on creating a railway between our houses, and I was wondering if I could send a storage minecraft with items down the railway and if it would reach his house without me accompanying it?

Answer

No.

Sorry there isnt a better answer but as soon as it goes out of an unloaded chunk, it stops getting updated and will not move any longer. There are mods out there that can keep chunks active for a server so you might want to look into those, but not by default.

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Giving a minecart momentum with a piston

Question

I am trying to setup a situation where I press a button and a minecart is pushed onto some powered track where it is then boosted up and giving a good speed.

This is what I tried (cross-section):

[P]M____ ^ piston
   ^ minecart
    ^^^^ powered track

When I give power to the piston, the minecart gets shoved onto the powered track fine, however it just rests there. In order to get it boosted by the powered track, I have to manually touch it.

Is there a way to get the cart boosted automatically when it gets pushed onto the track?

Answer

This can be done without the piston at all.

If a cart is sitting on an inactive powered rail which begins receiving power, it will start moving as long as there is only one direction for it to go. This occurs if…

• …the powered rail is sloped (you will go downwill), or
• …the cart's travel in one direction is blocked by a wall.

You can use this to start from the end of a track by placing a wall:

Or in the middle of a track using a dip:

(Images courtesy of the official wiki's page on powered rails.)

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