AN OPEN AIR attraction is marking the 40th anniversary of its tramway with a four-day celebration from tomorrow (Thursday, April 4).

A four-tram service will be working on the one-and-a-half-mile tramway at Beamish Museum, near Stanley, County Durham, with changes of tramcar throughout the day, giving visitors the opportunity to ride on a whole range of restored trams.

Behind-the-scenes tours of the new Regional Heritage Engineering Centre at 11am, 12pm, 1pm and 2pm, from tomorrow to Sunday, will give an insight into the restoration projects that Beamish undertakes.

There will also be family activities including printing, storytelling and “spot the tram’.

Steam, vintage and veteran vehicles will be taking to the roads around the museum and on Saturday and Sunday there will be a model tramway exhibition in the Regional Resource Centre.

A new book, Forty Years of Service, which celebrates the anniversary of the tramway, will be launched during the event. A talk by its authors Paul Jarman, Beamish’s head of transport and industry, and Les Brunton, of the Beamish Tramway Group, will be held in the Collections Study Room at 3.30pm tomorrow.

The celebrations, entitled Our Friends Electric, form part of The Great North Festival of Transport at Beamish in April - from trams to steam trains, motorcycles to cars and more besides.

Coming up is The Great North Steam Fair, from April 11 to 14 and Old King Coal, from April 18 to 21.

For more information visit www.beamish.org.uk.

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