Railroad Modeler Turned Aircraft Modeler

Greetings!

I’ve been a life-long model railroader, building and kitbashing my models. I haven’t built a model aircraft kit in 30 years, or a model car kit since I was a little kid (I think it was a Monogram model of Don Prudhome’s “Snake” funny car).

I’ve decided to get out of model trains because the manufacturers seem to beleive we no longer want to build kits, and would rather collect models that are assembled for us by the ChiComs. This has lead to shortages in the availability of detail parts, abandonment of the Floquil paint line from Pactra, and a number of other issues that are making the hobby more and more difficult.

I’ve long been a fan of the Finescale Modeling community, and regularly thumb through the Finescale Modeler magazine (among others) to find techniques that I can adapt to my model railroading, but no more. I’m divesting myself of my model trains.

I was reading up on early jet aircraft, and came across references made to the first US jet aircraft - the Bell YP-59A. After I learned the US Navy had two of these, and that there was a 1:48 kit available from Hobbycraft, the die was cast - I’d build my first model aircraft in 30 some odd years.

I’ll start another thread on my Hobbycraft YP-59A build. This post is merely the required (or suggested) introductory post.

Welcome aboard. We do get the occasional train on here, so you mkight feel a little at home.

Dive in and enjoy.

Welcome to the Forum!

Me too! My issue was available real estate.

Welcome. We have a whole Group Build on RR stuff hosted by Jibber and moi. mostly 1/72 and 1/35 but any scale any era is welcome.

RR Group Build cut and paste this link

[color=blue]http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/162767.aspx[/color]

Welcome aboard,I can really appreciate a nice layout for sure.

Welcome, and me too ! I’ve still got the railroad in the basement and still work on it and run it, but got back into A/C modeling a couple of years ago. I’m having a ball and hope you will too. Tom

Welcome aboard,

The same goes for radio control AC. There was a time you could only get a kit, or scratch build one yourself. Now there are fewer kits, and you have to dig to find a decent plan.
Steve

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!

Here in Florida, basements are scarce, and attics uninhabitable, what with all the hurricane bracing and central air plumbing. I could build a garden railroad, but none of my HO scale (1:87.1) equipment would be appropriate, and there seems to be very little in operable fine scale models in the scales suitable for garden modeling. Plus, even the garden is too darn hot this time of year!

What on earth did we do before air conditioning! LOL

Thanks again for the welcome!

Welcom to the Forums! Glad to have you aboard!

Jim [cptn]