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.