[jswelker]

The throughput of the rail is nearly infinity, but you will still be bottlenecked by the speed of inserters and belts on loading and unloading. I think of trains in best case as a highway that temporarily merges many belts together across a long distance before splitting off again at the end. Ultimately they are about saving space and keeping the infra tidy.

[computably]

Inserters have a max throughput of 120/s each chest-to-chest, 12 inserters can (un)load a single cargo wagon so 1440/s per-wagon. So 6:1 belts:wagons, a massive speed advantage over long distances, and much more flexible M:N distribution.

[reitzensteinm]

M:N distribution itself has been massively devalued in Space Age - it’s so cheap and easy to build everything from scratch in situ with the new production buildings.

Eg you don’t need city blocks making circuits, just pipe in molten metal and make them with foundries and EM plants. And then you also get steel, copper wire, gears, whatever else you might need.

There are a few exceptions of course, like lubricant for electric engines, but it’s not nearly as complicated as it was pre Space Age.