April 2008. The Bruce Smetham class 42 Warship resin loco body has been sitting in the flat pack store for the past couple of years now - I had absolutely no clue how to go about building a chassis and motorising it. However, the Mike Chinnery motor bogies and the plastikard chassis structure I used in building the class 15 gave me an idea; build a full-length chassis to fit into the body from sheet plastikard and then sit Mike Chinnery motor bogies underneath it. This should be a reasonably straightforward process and working with a resin body will make a change from bending and soldering brass as in the last few kits I've made. The body itself is mostly up to the high standard expected from Bruce's mouldings, although some of the side vents could be a bit better defined and the bodyside cantrail is a bit "lumpy". Given that these bodies are not the output of some industrial-scale production process and that the price you pay only covers the upfront production costs, reflects the fact that the motivation behind the production of these bodies is passion for the hobby, not profit, that is perhaps an unfair comment.

Bruce's mouldings have set a standard far in advance of anything that came before in terms of 3mm scale resin loco bodies. So although there may be one or two minor flaws, I think they actually add to the character of the model and that overall it nicely captures the look and feel of the Warships.

The chassis is made up from 1.5mm sheet plastikard and square rodding, the idea being that the square rodding will help give longitudunal rigidity.

The wheelbase of the Chinery bogies is admittedly too short. However, not being a purist or rivet-counter that doesn't particularly bother me and I'm willing to live with the compromise as I don't think it will be too noticeable. This does nowever mean that the finely-detailled bogie centre detail white metal casting supplied with the kit will not be usable and I'm going to have to make it up from something else.