NEWS that the Heritage Lottery Fund has given stage one backing - a sort of provisional approval - to Shildon's bid for £4.75m to build an offshoot of the National Railway Museum was greeted with almost universal acclaim last week.

Slightly dissenting voices were heard from Darlington, no doubt based upon the town's popular provenance as the birthplace of the railways. But setting aside arguments that Darlington should have such a facility (on the grounds that Shildon's needs are probably greater and Darlington has had more than enough time to capitalise on its steam heritage and has well and truly missed its connection), serious questions should be asked about the viability of the project.

Topically, the news was released in the same week it was announced that another Lottery-funded project, the museum devoted to popular music in Sheffield, was to close due to lack of interest.

It is also not long since the great hand-wringing over the losses made by the excellent Royal Armouries museum in Leeds. Similarly the Earth Centre, a "green theme park experience" a little further south at Doncaster has failed to attract the visitors expected.

It should be pointed out that the Shildon project, at a total cost of £6m, is not on the same scale as those mentioned above but nevertheless it would be another major visitor attraction in the region dependent on sufficient people coming through the doors to cover its running costs.

There is a real risk that the talk of a potential 40,000 visitors a year could be pie in the sky. Attraction-fatigue is a modern-day leisure industry phenomenon. It is highly likely rail enthusiasts will make the slightly less than easy journey to the South Durham town to pour over railway memorabilia. It is possible they will even savour the delights of changing trains at Darlington to travel onwards on the Heritage line as today's train operators like to call the remnants of the Darlington-Bishop Auckland railway service. But would it attract an audience with a less-than fanatical interest in all things shiny and steamy?

This initiative should be applauded for at last taking the North-East's incomparable railway heritage seriously and attempting to maximise its potential for bringing visitors to the area. Hitherto any such attempts have been marred by petty turf wars (most notably Darlington and Stockton's spat over the "true" birthplace of the railways).

But hard questions need to be asked of the bid's backers. It is highly likely, given the dubious track-record of Lottery-backed projects in fulfilling their glossy-brochure promise, that the Heritage Lottery Fund will do so.

By exposing this plan to rigorous scrutiny, the fund will do Shildon a favour. The last thing that battered and bruised community needs is another failure