am I doing something wrong
 

I have the Introducing Maya 8: 3d for Begginers books and I am following along with the projects in it. However I have noticed that when I make an object say the poly cylinder for the locomotive and it tells me what to scale it to, I scale it but it is much much smaller than what it appers to be in the book. In the book I can judge the estimate size by seeing the grid in the photos. What am I doing wrong? Anyone know what I am talking about?

I'd guess your scale parameters are different from the books.

How would I go about checking / fixing that? Thanks for the quick reply. Are you not doing your little comic strips anymore?