When completed, it will stand two feet tall and fifteen inches wide, big enough to sit on and ride. The original blueprints were donated to the California Railroad Museum when the Lima Locomotive Works went out of business in the 1970s. Johnson obtained copies of the original blueprints and used them to build the locomotive. Some of the parts he's had to reverse engineer, taking measurements from the parts that connect to the unknown piece. Each step along the way he has to decide what part should be created and built first.
Locomotive building requires many skills.
By the end of the project Johnson will be a woodworker, machinist, welder, and boiler-maker. He spent about six years creating wood patterns of about two dozen parts, such as universal joints, wheels, journey boxes, brackets, caps, and parts of the frame. Because he doesn't live in a neighborhood where he could have his own foundry, Johnson took the parts to a foundry in Berkeley to have the metal castings done. I just read the book and did what it told me to do. He has taken the same approach to teaching himself the other trades.