(Inventor's Table's maximal upgrade). It will build us two necessary stations:



and...


now...

• Composite Rail (it will use durasteel) or Rusty Rail (copper). In necessary amount. These rails are 1x1 blocks and go to the Blocks tab of inventory.
  
• Composite Rail Platform / Rusty Rail Platform - 1 pcs. These go to the Tools tab (first one).
  
• Rail Stop - 2 pcs - Furniture tab

Tip: You can also use Rail bumpers instead of stops - then you won't need buttons, since your elevator will ride up-n-down non-stop (e.g.: find somewhere one of Apex Research Institutes - it's a totally ground hostile dungeon guarded by drones from both ends AND it has bumpers elevators a lot. Including sensors here and there to light propaganda posters so you won't forget to hail the Big Ape). Or you can try to combine: one stop, one bumper. That sounds interesting too but I won't talk about that today.

• Buttons (any buttons to press them once, small wall buttons for example) - 2 pcs
  
• OR Switch - if needed.

Notice that Rail Platforms are 5x1 sized. So you need your elevator shaft 5 blocks wide, the central one will be used by rails.



Tip: you will need temporary building platforms (wooden, copper, stone, etc.) to build the shaft and place the rails. Put them outside the shaft or remove them when the job is done. Don't leave them inside your shaft because they can drop you down while you ride.
Both rail's ends must have Rail Stop. Or bumpers. Without them rail platform will be dropped. Rail platform will close the rail stop fully (1 block) - so count that when you're building the floor.

Now you have your railways with both ends closed by rail stops/bumpers. You can put your rail platform now. If you didn't mess, it will ride all the way down with no falling away.
Simply saying, it should look somehow this way:



Don't mind the blue thingy yet.

It's easy. I hope you've already discovered the magical manipulator's wiring mode (T key on keyboard by default). If not - upgrade your gravity manipulator to unlock this mode.

Using the wiring mode is all about how to connect red dots to blue dots. Output to input, papa to mama, Mulder to Scully, etc.
So connect red dots of both buttons to both rail stops (blue dots). So you will be able to press any of these buttons and: 1) call the elevator, 2) ride the elevator.




Tip: place the buttons close enough to reach from the rail platform

That concludes my dirty insinuations on the topic of simple elevators.
Now let's talk about longer railways.

You probably noticed that you can't wire too long ways. 80 blocks or a bit more (depending on screen resolution, zoom, maybe, dunno). It's because the game's world only exists for you. Nothing happens outside a certain range from you. So when you see a natural disaster of huge meteorite erasing a whole village - you're the reason. Live with that now, bwahaha! But let's continue the topic.

We need to relay the signal so it can reach further. There are different solutions. Some people use ordinary doors, for example. But I'll suggest you to use logical OR Switch. It has two inputs and one output. Put it where the signal can reach it from all the ends (buttons, stops and other wiring points).
And again, you put the signal from all the red "out" dots into blue "in" dots. It's how the things work in the living nature.
In our elevator case we connect one red button's dot to the one blue dot of the OR Switch and to the nearest Rail stop, another button to another blue dot of the OR Switch and again to the nearest Rail stop. And then you connect red dot of the OR Switch to both Rail stops. Here's the screenshot to help you understand my mumbling.



I don't want to touch that but... The case when you decided to build something more epic will be more, more complicated. Putting just mere one joint won't help you, alas. For two joints realying you will need not two but the whole four OR Switches. Two for one signal's way (for one button) and two for another way (button). At least I built working elevator using such a scheme. But it can lag. Especially if your platform passes a border between underground biomes. I dunno how to solve such the issue.

For long lines you can build Rail Tram elevator. For that let's proceed to the next chapter

The most simple version for elevator with few stops is the Rail Tram. You could see them at space stations. Or in Dantalion mission, for example. You pressss the button to call the platform and interact with tram platform itself to embark, then press your directional keybinds (wasd) to ride. Rail Tram will stop at every stop... sounds too obviously, well.



You will need:

• Composite Rail (blocks)
  
• Rail Tram (platform)
  
• Rail Tram Stops
  
• Buttons

Rail Tram Stop. It's pretty interesting thing 3 blocks long but just 1 central block is material (it's exactly where platform's bottom will stop). You can sink both ends in building blocks. Central block, as I said, is solid and you will have to break one block of your rail to implant Rail Tram Stop there.



Now the wiring. Thanks to Starbounder forums people for explanations.
As you noticed, Rail Tram Stop has three nods. Top and central are "in" and the bottom one is "out".
And so you can wire all the stops to the net. Connect a red nod of one stop to a blue nod of another stop and so further till the end of your net. As for buttons to call your elevator - wire one button to the central nod of the closest rail tram stop. And that's just it. Thanks to your rail net, this button will call your elevator from any stop. Yes, that's also relaying the signal function. Use it.



If you need a relay point but don't need a stop there, you can just put rail tram stop outside rails and wire it to the net.

P.S. I believe there was also some guide for another way to build a multifloor elevator. More complex one.
P.P.S. Earlier I had to close end points of ending rail tram stops with bumpers to prevent platform's falling out. After recent Starbound's update I don't have such the issue anymore and can freely sink ending nods into building blocks.

That's all, folks!
Questions, tips, bad formatting reports, etc. - please leave to comments