Tennis ball bomber Neil Lewington is facing a life sentence after being convicted of planning a racist terror campaign.

The white supremacist and neo-Nazi was found guilty at the Old Bailey of preparing for acts of terrorism.

He was also found guilty of having explosives with intent to endanger life and five other terror and explosives charges. The 43-year-old unemployed electrician of Tilehurst, Reading, Berkshire, was remanded in custody for sentencing on September 8.

Judge Peter Thornton issued a warning to Lewington: “The likely outcome is a lengthy sentence of imprisonment.”

Lewington had wanted to be a notorious race hate bomber and idealised Soho nail bomber David Copeland and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.

He was arrested by chance on a train after travelling from Reading, through London, to Lowestoft, Suffolk, with two firebombs in a holdall in October, last year.

Police found he had turned his bedroom in his parent's house into a bomb factory full of detonators, explosives, weedkiller and racist material.

It also contained three tennis balls and plans to turn them into shrapnel bombs which, he said, he could throw at the home of an Asian family.

Lewington wrote a chilling “mission statement” in which he boasted of two-man hit squads bombing the UK at random.

The court was told the loner, who had been drinking, was arrested after he insulted a woman conductor on the train and urinated on the platform at Lowestoft.

His holdall bag was found to have two firebombs which would have exploded when primed.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: “This man, who had strong if not fanatical right wing leanings and opinions, was on the cusp of embarking on a campaign of terrorism against those he considered non-British.

“In addition to his extreme views on race and ethnicity, the defendant had an unhealthy interest in bombers as well as bombings. It is abundantly clear that in the privacy of his own bedroom, this defendant had begun the manufacture of improvised explosive or incendiary devices.”

Lewington's parents had no idea what he was up to. He had not spoken to his father in 10 years.

He talked to women in internet chatrooms and met up with some of them.

One woman was put off by him when he said “the only good Paki was a dead Paki”. Her former husband had been Asian.

An Army cadet sergeant said he had an interest in chemicals and had taken some weedkiller from her.

Later, Lewington bought a child's chemistry set from Toys R Us and told the cadet that he could make explosives using it and household items.

Mr Altman said: “He told her either that he had made, or could make, tennis ball bombs and that he would take them to woods to explode them.”

Another girlfriend said he spoke of making tennis ball bombs and asked at which house in her street an Asian family lived.

The jury rejected a suggestion by David Etherington QC, defending, that Lewington was a “silly immature alcoholic dysfunctional twit, fantasising to make up for a rather sad life”.

After the verdict, Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Bethan David said: “While holding racist beliefs is not a crime, planning and preparing to attack or terrorise people with explosive devices is a criminal act.

“The material collected during the investigation, coupled with the nature of the devices that he had made, convinced us that Neil Lewington was a real threat not just to the people that he was targeting but to anyone in the vicinity had he succeeded in detonating his bombs.

“He had the knowledge and the will to cause destruction, injury and death.”