| Step 1: | Obtain a drawing |
My first step is to obtain a drawing of the locomotive to work from. It does not have to be highly detailed; the purpose of this is to get the basic dimensions and proportions right, so that when the finer detail is applied 'by eye' later, it's correctly positioned. Scale drawings, as published in the model railroad press, are best (though beware of inaccuracies even here; some published drawings are spectacularly wrong, for example the PRR E-6s in Model Railroader.) |