Due to te fact that rail-tracks can only be placed in 2 space intervals, ( i.e. straight tracks can never overlap), the distance between tracks is always an even amount.
A chest buffer however you make one is always uneven. Inserter --> chest --> inserter (3), Inserter --> chest --> inserter--> chest --> inserter (5).
Making a train to train buffer is therefore not quite possible without some "unintended" stuff.
placing two perpendicular tracks between the two trains, add a wagon, and inserters works.
T->W W W -> T
T->W W W -> T
T->W W W -> T
This also works with cars, and is more space efficient.
The downside is that this can not be blueprinted, and cars and wagons cannot be connected to the circuit network.
Manual placing of cars and wagons is tedious work. And i believe there should be some intended solution.
for now, the best one is to unload in provider chest, and load with requester chests, place a bunch of robot ports around it and just let 1000 logistic robots do the job.
All other solutions: belts / longarmed inserters etc, will not be as efficient as chest to chest, due to stack bonuses .
With the current bots vs belts discussion going on I believe this is one of the areas where the bot solution is currently the only viable one.
I would love that a track could be placed 3 spaces from another track. or that there be something like a MEGA chest, that is 2 spaces wide so inserter - megachest - insterter works.
Love to hear (your/devs) opinions.
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