EDIT: I'd advise caution to survival peeps using the new continent rail at the moment, its currently an extremely dangerous route. Long falls + lava + fire + pigmen + ghasts blowing holes in the track. Almost lost all my gear after a long fall caused by pigmen..died 3 times trying to get it back x.x
EDIT EDIT: Highly advise bow and arrow, knocking them off the track with it while in a speeding cart is fun :>
Also bring multiple minecarts, they tend to fall off the track when you destroy them when you're fighting pigmen.
tl;dr: Don't worry, you're protected by glass blocks now. Don't try to break them or get out of your cart; there's stations every 1000m for disembarking.
Scratch both of those now; I went along the track and placed glass blocks at the minecart rider's head level along the entire route, both directions. You don't suffocate in glass blocks, and you can still see out, but you can't
be seen by anything, and more importantly, nothing can wander onto the rails themselves, so your ride should remain blissfully uninterrupted.
The only catch is that since you're in a block, you can't jump out of your cart whenever you want - right-clicking the cart actually right-clicks the inside of the glass block and thus does nothing. You
can break the glass blocks as you whiz through them, but I'd ask you not to - there's no point. By the time one breaks, you're already moved on and will still be unable to get out of the cart.
To compensate for this, I made stations every 1000m, where the cart will stop, you can (and have to) get out, pick up the cart, walk 10 blocks, and place it on the continuation of the rail. So if you want to explore something you saw en route, those are the places you should get off at.
