another consideration to make: how many trains do i need on the network?
my most in-demand station requires roughly 1200 items/s, or 1 train per 10 seconds.
my most distant mining outpost is ~16km away, which at top speed is roughly 200 seconds. add on a few more seconds for unloading and loading, waiting at intersections, and the round trip should be roughly 500 seconds
therefore as a worst-case analysis, if i want a train every 10 seconds, i need at any given time 50 trains in transit between these two stations!! that's really insane and i have no clue how the hell i'm going to pull it off (i mean i currently only have 10 waiting spots set up, with room for perhaps 10 more...)