At one point, Jim Garnett’s job was putting people deep in space.

“When I was working in the aerospace business, I worked on the rocket that went to the moon, then on the space shuttle,” he said.

Then he found himself deep in the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina.

“We were wiped out,” Garnett said of his family’s home in Louisiana. “We had to do something because our house was destroyed.”

So he set his sights on his home state — Alabama — where he and his wife, Linda, would be near his daughters and son.

And that’s when everything changed gears.

He bought a house in Helena.

And he became a train conductor…

Read more about Jim Garnett of the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum in the March issue of Shelby Living. Find your copy here.