Greetings! Back again with another useful device for your Minecraft worlds and servers! As you might have seen from my other posts, fueling furnaces and keeping them going is one of my passions with redstone. The problem I was tackling with this first arose when the server I play on (AWNW.net #shamelessplug) had the tick rate of it's hoppers dialed down to help reduce server-side lag. This infuriated me as it nullified the effectiveness of hoppers for silent T flip-flops and for even item distribution that I've used in some of my previous auto-furnace builds. So, with that in mind, here I present to you a system that is independent of server tick rates and will make your Minecraft life a little more interesting.

The furnace:
This is my own top-down design that even distributes coal between an even number of furnaces. I picked 4 because it's the smallest number I could effectively demonstrate this technique upon. Input (ore, raw food, etc) and fuel are top loaded into the trapped chests and will be distributed evenly to the furnaces below using the redstone-active stop feature of the hoppers. Each level of chests will disable the row of furnaces below the next row of chests, allowing for even distribution, the more furnaces, the more stops and the taller your structure will be. But this is just 4. With the option to auto-empty you can opt for efficiency or to stop the process so you can harvest your XP from smelting by manually emptying the furnaces one at a time.

The rails:
For all my adventures rails are quite under-used. They tend to be complicated in the strangest of ways, but here I have for you a system that is somewhat simple and provides a very sought-after feature: auto cart return to station. Your main track feeds the furnaces. When a hopper-cart arrives, it will stay put until it's dropped off it's load, then be sent back automatically. Your main track can have as many sub-stations as you like so long as you follow the switch-track design I created, which will guarantee that if you send a cart from that station, you will get one back. This allows for infinite expansion from mining area to mining area or even a storage area.

The zip:
The zip file found under the schematic download contains the world save and schematic (all less than 200kb) for you to experiment with.

I've included signs with helpful explanations and tips to help you navigate this device. (Don't you hate it when a redstone upload contains no instructions?) And of course, if you need help just post up here. I would appreciate a diamond (top left of this post) if you like my device and please feel free to use and share this as you see fit. Enjoy!