Are there any practical uses for rails in a survival world?

In survival mode I tend to only use rails if I get lucky and stumble upon large abandoned mine shaft dungeons where I'm able to break apart and collect the spawned rails. It doesn't usually yield much but sometimes I use them to build a convenient mode of travel from my house to a nearby mine or other nearby location.

 

I don't see the point of using rails in Creative worlds, since people can fly around and stuff, unless of course you turn that aspect off. I definitely use rails in Survival to connect various villages and castle towns together. Mind you, I am talking about Single Player/LAN MP games. As for externally hosted MP games, one of the servers I play don't allow such things. It can be considered a logistical nightmare when there are building rules and privacy in place.

 

Yes! If you have a multistory home or just want to get up somewhere higher, faster, the powered rails are the way to go. If built correctly, they can carry you up faster than ladders, spiral stairs, or boat elevators. I have one installed in my survival home after I got a headache from running up and down my spiral staircase one day. Super useful and worth the time and effort. Here's mines, it doubles as an elevator and "art piece".

 

Of course! Well, if you have iron to spare. Generally I have so much iron I don't know what to do with it besides stockpiling it so I usually build a bunch of tracks and minecarts.

It's pretty expensive but I like laying track down after me when I go spelunking. That way I can stay down there for a looong time without having to go back up to dump my inventory in a chest. With minecarts you have several "inventories" with you and you can also put a bunch of food or potions into one of them so you don't run out.

 

I use rails all the time for mining, especially in the neither. Without the rail system, sometimes running back and forth would just be too much.

It is pretty buggy though.

 

It is good to use if you have the resources. I once made a railing system to deliver supplies and or stuff I had mined out of my Mine to my house and then send it back down. Always fun to play with once in awhile. Of course as many know it it really takes awhile to get all the resources in order to build the tracks, but it is worth it.

 

I think rails are filled with practical uses. Generally, it gets you from one place to another faster than running, and it doesn't decrease your hunger bar. You can build tracks from town to town that you can build or to villages that you find. It can be a convenient way to have a system of getting from one place to another without having to run, eat, and even run the risk of getting lost in the process. The rails take you where you need to go as long as they aren't tampered with. Only way they will be tampered with in Singleplayer is from a creeper explosion.

 

When considering real world applications, this is one of those things that actually reflect well as to how it actually is - Rails are used for quicker travel, transportation of objects and etc as to better maximize how much can be done in a day.

It takes a while to build, though, but it definitely starts saving time.

 

I usually build a small railway system when I build my house at the top of a mountain so I can quickly go down
Other than that.... yeah I guess I don't use them much.

 

I use them whenever I build a base far away from my first base, when I want to "start over", because some day I maybe want to go back and it would be bad if I wouldn't remember the way. They also make travelling a lot faster, so it's actually pretty convenient to use them to go down mineshafts too.

 

If you play a lot, eventually you get to the point where you have enough diamonds that you can have exclusively diamond tools, so using rails is a great way to travel quickly and a good use for excess iron that you probably wouldn't use otherwise.

 

To me, rails aren't worth the resources in survival. Minecarts are horribly slow, with powered rails it takes up much more resources than regular, but is actually fast. I have never had the need to ever use them, If minecarts were cars and worked off the rails, i would make one every single time i ran a survival world though.

 

Useful if you have multiple houses far apart.

 

There are great for getting around although they can be expensive. Despite needing to make quite an investment in them I find them to be worth it in the long run by allowing me to move between my projects quickly.

 

If you have to transport items to your friends pretty quickly and there is no /tpa command on the server and the same goes if you want to move from one place to another and there is no /home command and so on. But I wouldnt consider them a priority, they could be removed from the game and I wouldnt notice.

 

They aren't extremely expensive, until you get to the powered rails. I agree with you, I tend to stay away from them because they take so many resources. I tend to just make roads and carry some food so I can sprint. I also like to build waterways more. However, they are very useful in survival worlds. In creative, they aren't at all because you can fly.

 

I like to building many parts of the world and I usually connect them by underground or above ground railroads for ease of access.

 

I like to have several different houses, not just one main one. After I "finished" the game, I started building a huge rail track to connect all my different houses. It's quite awesome to cross the ocean on a rail, then descend into an underwater palace.

 

Rails are good if you have huge settlements. I like placing them around farms, and sometimes in deep mines. But I'll have to say the main reason I use them is because I like the idea of a train carrying me around my house