Compressing Giants: Designing Railway Artwork for Merchandise

6213 locomotive drawing for the Toronto Railway Museum

One of the more technically challenging projects I have worked on recently was a series of illustrations created for the Toronto Railway Museum in Toronto. The goal of the project was to develop a collection of stickers, postcards, and magnets featuring some of the museum’s flagship exhibits. Early on, we identified two pieces of rolling stock that would translate particularly well into merchandise: the 6213 steam locomotive and the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo caboose.

At first glance, trains seem like straightforward subjects to illustrate. In reality, they present a surprisingly difficult design problem, especially when the final artwork is intended for products like stickers and magnets.

The main challenge came down to proportions and product size. Steam locomotives are extremely long machines. If I had illustrated the 6213 perfectly to scale from a traditional side profile, the resulting sticker would have been awkwardly long and narrow. It would not have translated well into a retail product. The same issue applied to the caboose. While shorter, it still needed to feel substantial and visually engaging without becoming oversized.

6213 Sketch

To solve this, I leaned heavily into perspective and foreshortening.

Instead of drawing the locomotive flat-on from the side, I exaggerated the front of the engine and allowed the body of the train to taper dramatically as it moved away from the viewer. This created the illusion of scale and power while compressing the overall composition into a format that worked as a sticker. The front of the locomotive appears large and imposing, while the rest of the engine gradually recedes into space.

That sounds simple in theory, but it was incredibly difficult in practice.

Foreshortening a train means every component has to shrink consistently while still remaining believable. The wheels, piping, boiler lines, cab proportions, and perspective angles all have to work together. If even one element is slightly off, the entire locomotive starts to feel warped or unrealistic. Maintaining accurate proportions while aggressively compressing the body of the train became a balancing act between

technical precision and artistic interpretation.

6213 reference photo taken at the Toronto Railway Museum

To help with this, I took a large number of reference photos on my phone during my visit to the museum. I also worked from photographs provided by the museum team. Having multiple angles to reference was essential because perspective distortion changes dramatically depending on where the photograph is taken. Studying those images helped me understand how the locomotive naturally behaved in space before I began pushing the perspective further for artistic effect.

The Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo caboose presented a different but equally interesting challenge. Unlike the locomotive, the caboose is extremely boxy and geometric in its construction. When you apply foreshortening to something so rectangular, even tiny inaccuracies become very noticeable. The angles of the roofline, windows, and side panels all have to remain structurally believable while the car itself compresses into perspective.

Sketch of the TH&B Caboose

It was surprisingly difficult to freehand those proportions while still making the caboose feel dynamic and visually interesting. I wanted to preserve the bold red color and recognizable silhouette of the car while also ensuring the final product would reproduce cleanly as a sticker and magnet.

Projects like this are always a reminder that illustration for merchandise is very different from illustration purely for display. Every artistic decision has to consider the final physical product. Perspective is not just a visual tool; it becomes a practical design solution. In this case, foreshortening allowed these massive railway subjects to retain their presence and personality while fitting naturally into a format someone could stick on a water bottle, toolbox, or fridge.

In the end, that balance between realism, perspective, and product design became one of the most rewarding parts of the project.

6213 magnets on display at the Toronto Railway Museum