MODERN day rail pioneers will be celebrating the success of an 11-year-campaign at the weekend.

The first regular passenger service for 51 years will leave Stanhope Station on Saturday morning, marking the reopening of the Weardale Railway as a tourist line, bringing much needed jobs and putting millions of pounds a year into the rural economy.

The £5m railway is a key element in a strategy aimed at revitalising isolated Weardale following works closures and the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis.

The company that will run it - Weardale Railways Ltd, supported by volunteers through the Weardale Railway Trust - has confounded some critics to buy the line and reopen the first three platforms at Stanhope, Frosterley and Wolsingham.

Complex technical and legal challenges have been overcome, the first six miles of overgrown track cleared and plans are in place first to extend west to Eastgate and then to link eventually with the main rail system at Bishop Auckland and Locomotion: the National Railway Museum at Shildon, creating a transport and tourist network.

Government chief whip Hilary Armstrong will perform the first of three opening ceremonies on Saturday before the 11.15am service steams off for Frosterley, where Tanya Allison will dedicate a Frosterley Marble sculpture given by her husband, Paul.

Margaret Fay, chairman of regional development agency One NorthEast, will reopen the platform at Wolsingham before joining the return journey for Stanhope.

Steam locomotives NER P3 0-6-0, borrowed from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and Tanfield Railway's Newcastle-built ex-NCB Robert Stephenson Hawthorn Austerity No 49, will pull carriages full of more than 200 invited dignitaries and fare paying passengers.

The first service will be dedicated to steam stalwart, retired Stanhope milkman John Woods, who was one of the original band of determined volunteers but who died in 1999 without seeing his dream fulfilled.

More than 500 volunteers have worked on the project which has already created 31 jobs.

Grants worth £3.5m have come from regional development agency One NorthEast, the European Development Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Other funders include the Northern Rock Foundation, CDENT, County Durham Foundation, volunteer agency 2D and numerous small groups.

Margaret Fay said: "One NorthEast is very pleased to have been able to provide £1m funding for the Weardale Railway project, that will have a tremendous impact on the area's economy. It is much more than a way of transporting people through the dale - it is a scheme that links to jobs, tourism, training, recreation and education."