Carol Fitzgerald spent 34 years teaching art at a public high school in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is probably why she can't look at a model railroad structure without mentally grading it. She came to the hobby through her late husband's layout, which she inherited in 2008 along with a half-finished freight depot that she refused to leave unbuilt. Now she focuses almost exclusively on scratch-building structures-particularly New England mill buildings and Victorian-era depots that most kit manufacturers never bother to produce. Her background in teaching informs everything she writes: step-by-step, patient, and never assuming you already know how to mix a paint wash or measure a scale window. She lives in the same house in Worcester where she raised her kids, and her workshop takes up what used to be the dining room.