Railcraft:Tunnel Bore

A tunnel bore in action.

The Tunnel Bore can automatically lay rails and if it encounters a mountain, it will even dig a 3x3 wide tunnel for you in whichever direction you point it.

The tunnel bore can be powered by any fuel and fills gaps in the terrain with gravel. The bore head degrades for each block mined and has to be replaced.

Details

General

• It takes 9 seconds on average to carve out a 3x3 layer of stone. Less if there is softer materials like dirt or air. Obsidian takes a very long time.
• In 10 minutes the Bore can carve a tunnel 64 tiles long. In 30 minutes, the Bore will pass beyond the chunk boundary if you remain at the starting point.

Why is my Tunnel Bore not working?

The Bore may stop digging for several reasons:

• Out of fuel.
• No Bore Head, or the Bore Head broke.
• Out of rails.
• Out of gravel or extremely deep hole encountered.
• Water flooding the tunnel.
• Dangerous increase in temperature detected underground. Lava suspected. The Bore will not dig out a layer if it believes there is lava behind that layer. Lava will destroy the Bore, be careful.
• A block was encountered that is not on the list of mineable blocks. Block IDs can be added to the mineable block list via the config file. Ores added via the Forge Ore Dictionary are automatically added to the list. Anything else, such as Redpower Marble, must be added manually via the Railcraft config file. See below.

Bore Head

• Bore Heads have durability and can be repaired using the vanilla repair recipes.
• An Iron Bore Head can bore 1500 blocks before breaking. This is enough to dig a tunnel more than 160 tiles long. Cannot mine Obsidian.
• A Diamond Bore Head can bore 6000 blocks before breaking and can mine Obsidian. This is enough to dig a tunnel nearly 700 tiles long. You'll run out of rails before the head breaks. The Bore can only hold 576 rails at a time. Three diamond pickaxes can only mine about 4500 blocks.

Fuel

• Can be powered by any fuel that burns in a Furnace.
• One piece of Coal or Charcoal will power the Bore for 10 seconds. A stack for 10 minutes. If filled full of Coal, the Bore can run for 70 minutes without user interaction.
• Lava is a valid fuel and one bucket will power the Bore for 2 minutes. Can hold 7 buckets at a time. Leaves behind an empty bucket.
• Coal Coke, the fuel of choice, will double the return rate of your Coal and lasts for 20 seconds per piece.

Fill

• When faced with a low spot, the Bore will attempt to fill it with gravel.
• The Bore can hold 9 stacks of gravel.
• The Bore will only attempt to fill holes less than 10 tiles deep. Ravines will bring it to a stop.

Rails

• The Bore can hold 576 rails at a time.
• The Bore can place any vanilla or Railcraft rail, though most special rails will interfere with the Bore's operation. Rails, plain Speed Rails, or plain Wooden Rails are recommended.
• The Bore will stop if it runs out of rails.

Crafting

Adding Blocks to the Config File

In the "railcraft.cfg" file, located in the "config" folder, there is the following line.

   tweaks.minecarts.bore.mineableBlocks={}

To add additional blocks to the list of blocks that can be bored by the Tunnel Bore, simply make a comma seperated list of the block ids between the brackets.

   tweaks.minecarts.bore.mineableBlocks={ 145, 230, 241 }