Diane Kowalski fell into model railroading sideways-she was working as a wildlife biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife when she started volunteering at the Georgetown Loop Railroad to help with their interpretation programs. One thing led to another, and now she has a garden railway in her backyard in Golden that recreates the Colorado and Southern's narrow gauge operations in painstaking detail. Her professional background means she's particular about getting vegetation right, and she's especially interested in how narrow gauge railroads interacted with the mountain ecosystems around them. She writes from the perspective of someone who models outdoors in a climate that actively wants to destroy model trains, which requires a certain kind of stubborn problem-solving attitude.