Designing Phase Part 3

Ernest remained seated, staring at the mountain of drafting vellum spread across his desk.

Locomotive cross-sections. Rail alignment profiles. Bridge loading standards. Maintenance roundhouses. Mechanical semaphore signaling. Telegraph infrastructure line-maps. Supply chain flowcharts.

Every single drawing represented a vital cog in the industrial leviathan he intended to wake up.

Yet none of them mattered. Not a single sheet.

Because every drawing shared the exact same hard, uncompromising dependency: Steel.

He slowly sank back into his leather chair, running a hand down his face.

"...I've been approaching this backwards," he muttered to the empty room.

His eyes drifted to the center of the desk, where the master railway layout lay open. Only an hour ago, he'd convinced himself that the locomotive was the logical starting point. Then he'd realized the railway had to come first.