After a trip to the dentist last week I treated myself by popping into the toys & collectables shop on our high street. They sometimes have some railway stuff and I had my eye on a Superquick church kit that I'd spotted in the window a week or two earlier. Alas, the aforementioned ecclesiastical structure had gone but a rummage in one of the bins turned up a nice little white metal car kit in the John Day range. Although I didn't realise it at the time, it's a prewar/war Hillman Minx.

The kit was remarkably simple, consisting of just two main castings, one for the body and one for the chassis/wheels. The castings were of excellent quality and needed minimal attention. The only other bits were two castings for the headlamps, and a vac-formed glazing piece. I discarded the latter, preferring to make up my own windows from spare transparent packaging. It took several goes for the front windscreen but I think the end result is preferable.

The model was "assembled" using cyano for the metal and glue-n-glaze for the windows, then brushed with Humbrol enamels. I thought it was a cracking kit so will be investigating more from the very inexpensive John Day range.

Another second-hand find was a very tatty old Lesney caravan that my wife found for me in an antiques market or similar. After languishing in my get-around-to-it-one-day box, I bit the bullet last week. The model was dismantled, cleaned up, repainted and flush-glazed (there was none with the original) using the same material as the Minx. The original was a very pale blue so I went for a similar Humbrol colour (also treating the Oxford diecast car at the same time). It's one of those vaguely depressing, institutional-looking 1950s colours that look good on Fender guitars and not much else! I don't know anything about road-vermin (sorry, caravans) but I think it looks 50s ish to my untrained eye.

And there you have it, a couple of bargain- bin finds now given new life, which I very much enjoy.