RailShield is a plugin that took about 5 minutes to make, which was requested by a user on IRC. What does it do? Well, it simply prevents players from taking suffocation damage while riding in a minecart. This allows for 1x1 tunnels that would normally hurt a player, but now do no harm whatsoever. As for practicality, it can be useful for making tunnels where the player's vision is 'blacked out', as all they will be able to see is the inside of the block they're traveling through.
Very simple, just install the plugin and start your server up. Ta-da!
And that about sums it up, not much else to say ;)