With the current rate of doing things it’s not a feature of a nearest future, that’s for sure. So if you want to make a mod, don’t let this stop you. History knows of many examples when a successful mod was then integrated into the game.
I would surely like to see this one - maybe even as a revival of an old outdated mod I mentioned earlier.
Minecarts I’m going to disagree on. Regardless if you have an extensive mining network or a large town, minecarts could be used in the sense as a mobile storage unit.
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Say I have an extensive mining operation going on. I could have a cart station in my town, and another that follows the end of my tunnels. May even have multiple tunnels. My Hearthlings could deposit their backpacks into one cart station, and the 'lings back in town could then empty the “cart” from the other station. Basically speeding up the mining process in the way that @astyanyx was originally talking with the elevator.
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Say someone actually wants to use their entire map for multiple small town areas. Minecarts could allow someone to connect multiple storage areas together, so that the 'lings aren’t traversing the entire map for building resources.
The reason I think this is better than a larger backpack is that even if you tripled the size of the current packs, your 'lings would still be traversing from a stockpile to their project. This would bring the stockpile to them.
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Minecarts can also be useful if we make terrain blocks with different durability. Currently all blocks are mined with one hit and give exactly one piece of resource (for resource blocks). What if stone will be harder to mine, requiring several hits, gold even harder etc? What if one block can hold different amounts of resource, awarding several gold pieces when mined?
Maybe minecarts (or conveyor belts) can also be useful when transporting other resources, like cooked food from the kitchen to the mess hall.
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Thank you - once the Commemorative Items mod has reached a more finished-ish state, I will resume thinking about my mills and contraptions. 
I should have put this here:
So here is an idea for cranes, and how they might be useful in bigger towns.
You aren’t supposed to have the crane right at the beginning, it should be something that you earn or progress toward. This is how the crane works:
- you place the crane next to a building site
- a hearthling gets resources and builds a building chunk on the platform of the crane. Currently they build them on the building straight away, and they’ll still do that when there are no(t enough) cranes around.
then the hearthling steps on the platform - a different hearthling operates the crane, and gets the platform to the spot on the building where the chunk belongs.
- the hearthling on the platform hammers the chunk into place and secures it to the building.
- the platform is brought back down to repeat the process.
Why implement this:
Building this way has two advantages to building. The general reason is that the hearthlings don’t need to path all over the building, but just need to stand next to the platform, which is somewhere on the ground. This means that the time spend climbing the building is saved, as are the computations for that pathing.
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Months later and this topic comes back… Not only that, but your idea is fantastic!
I would definitely support this idea. You think there’s some way to push it to Radiant?
-Surly
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Liking this topic/the specific reply, or mentioning it on a related stream/AMA/similar are the best ways I know of.