david barrows domino modeling approach - Model Railroader Magazine
I started building domino benchwork not long after David Barrow's original 1995 article on the concept appeared in MR (part of a three part series if memory serves). It freed my mind of the paralyzing notion that I somehow needed to wrassle 4x8 sheets of plywood into the basement; instead I could buy 2x4 ft handipanel plywood (and homasote) sheets and lengths of 1x4" lumber that fit easily into my car and easily down the basement steps. That may seem obvious but it came as a revalation to me at the time.
Once your layout is up then, yes, it does seem like the domino approach uses way more legs than is necessary; 4 legs for a small 2x4 foot domino that once bolted or screwed to a second domino, now you're talking 8 legs where 4 would do, and so on.
BUT "economizing" on legs misses out on three key virtues of the domino/Barrow approach. First of all, once you have built an inventory of dominos but before you have started putting pencil to paper for a track plan, you can actually move them around the room trying out different ideas. I used Barrow's idea of paper dominos on a scaled drawing of the floor plan, but even so, being able to visualize real dominos in this corner or around that column was crucial to my planning, since even the best drawing of the layout room and layout plan ends up looking rather different once you have real benchwork.
With domino planning you can do the traditional order of track plan first and then arrange the dominos to fit the plan, OR you can see what kind of benchwork arrangement your work space can actually accept, and then draw a plan to match the available space. The latter is what I did. My layout consists of Tony Koester-type LDEs (layout design elements), meaning I copy prototype track arrangements as closely as I can for each siding, spur, crossover, and significant industry. Having the domino arrangement come first was thus a simple matter of fitting what I knew to be the track plan on a tangent, or around a corner, on an extension etc.
And third, and perhaps this is more personal to David Barrow than to most of us, he is constantly changing his layout, moving the pieces around, trying different configurations, and for that you want each domino to always be an independent actor, meaning each has its own four legs, even if it stays put for years, or forever.
Barrow himself would list a fourth virtue that I have utilized in a limited manner: that is that the subframe stays put (on its legs) while the plywood framed top can be removed, taken to the workbench for tricky trackwork or wiring, and replaced -- or put on any other domino.
No law says that once you settle on a track plan and benchwork arrangement, that you cannot remove a set of legs and reuse them for the next domino.
Dave Nelson
