Sometimes it's about sending a message. I present to you, Soup (Rail) Bus

https://imgur.com/tsix7ad

4 Lines, 12 inserters, no circuits needed. O Fortuna plays in my head when I see this monstrosity. The idea came from a friend when we were bashing our heads against Warptorio 2, before we mistakenly realized the warp chest IS able to be circuit connected (or was broken and got fixed later, IDK).

Honestly, probably overkill, could have done inserter gates to a giant sushi belt with small offshoot sushi belts, and much earlier even, but it does solve "needing a mall", "needing an ingredient delivery system", and "needing an item buffer" at the same time. The chest version I had was WAY too small and suffered from throughput problems. Crazy to be 20 hours in and only just now need to bother to automate smelting.

Does factorio mod forums not have inline picture posting or something? The regular forum does.