A toy train which featured in an audacious fraud is to be auctioned.

Experts at Teesside auction house Vectis reckon the so-called "Tsar's train" could fetch more than £15,000.

The toy was reported to have been owned by Tsar Nicholas II.

A photograph of the Tsar and his daughter, with the train, taken at the Crillon Hotel in Paris in 1905, appeared to back this up.

But the whole thing was an elaborate fraud put together by London toy dealer Jeffrey Levitt, who subsequently went to jail for four years for a swindle which defrauded banks of £12m.

Now it is to be auctioned by Barry Potter Auctions, part of the Vectis Toy Auction Group.

Levitt, who ran Mint and Boxed, in Hendon, put the photograph together to suggest a provenance to what his company called the "The Tsar's Train." The toy had a £600,000 price tag.

The company collapsed in May 1991 with debts of £15m and assets of £800,000. The following month it won the Queen's award for Export.

The fake train never sold. It was eventually auctioned off by Sotheby's in January, 1992, as part of the Mint and Boxed liquidation.

Tsar Nicholas II received a similar toy during the Russian Royal family's state visit to Paris in 1905.

On leaving the French capital, the family had so much luggage that they left it with the general manager of the Crillon Hotel in Paris.

Bryan Goodall chairman of the Vectis Auction Group, in Thornaby, Teesside, said: "Apart from its unusual provenance, it is an extremely rare train in very good condition."

The Vectis Auction Group is the largest auctioneers of toys in the world.

The Tsar's train will go under the hammer at Rugby, Warwickshire, on Saturday.