FURTHER details emerged yesterday of the exciting £6m project that will put a railway town firmly on the tourist map.

Although the old marshalling yard at Shildon, County Durham, is now forgotten and overgrown, in three years' time it should be covered by an attractive glass building housing 70 engines, wagons and carriages from the National Railway Museum (NRM) at York. It will be connected to the nearby Timothy Hackworth Museum by its own railway, with diesel and steam locos taking tourists from one museum to the other.

Viewing the site, NRM director Andrew Scott said: "It will be a place for housing railway vehicles, because we have 280 at York and room for barely half of them. But it will be designed with visitors in mind."

He urged a note of caution as the Heritage Lottery Fund had only agreed its £4.57m contribution in principle, and will not confirm it until detailed plans are submitted in a year's time.

"But we are absolutely tickled pink, because it is a tremendous vote of confidence in the project and in Shildon," said Mr Scott. "Tuesday's announcement was the maximum amount the Heritage fund could offer."

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the plans is that, when the NRM at Shildon is complete, it is hoped to run special trains between it and Darlington's North Road Museum, so that the Stockton and Darlington Railway begins to develop a tourism strategy - one of the key aims of The Northern Echo's Treasuring Our Railway Heritage campaign.

Backing the campaign, Mr Scott said: "On television the other night it was said that the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, which opened in 1830, marked the start of the Industrial Revolution, but that would not have happened without the S&DR. It was the first steam public railway and it gave that technology to the world. It shaped the world we live in today and we do take it for granted.

"We should make more of it and this development in Shildon will create a massive marketing opportunity."

It is expected that 40,000 visitors a year will visit the attraction. "The most unglamorous exhibit they will see will be an unrestored 19th Century freight wagon, but there will also be the prototype for the thousand 1970s coal wagons that were built in Shildon," said Mr Scott.

"There will be five royal carriages of varying vintage, a couple of steam locos and the 1960s experimental jet-powered tilting train which still holds the British railways speed record of 160mph."

To give further impetus to The Northern Echo's campaign to commemorate the 175-year-old S&DR, he said there was a chance the Gaunless Bridge - the world's first iron railway bridge which George Stephenson built near West Auckland in 1824 - could be moved from the car park at the York museum to the attraction at Shildon