SOME of the North-East's industrial heritage will be saved for future generations thanks to a new storage building.

The £1.7m building, in the style of a nineteenth century railway wagon works, will be located at Beamish Museum.

It will enable the museum and the Tyne and Wear Museums Service to preserve their collections of railway locomotives, wagons, carriages, turbines and agricultural equipment.

The Heritage Lottery Fund is giving £684,000 to the project, adding to £800,000 from the Designated Museums Fund and other money from the Beamish Museum's joint committee and Tyne and Wear Museums Service.

Work is due to start on the building before Easter and is expected to be ready late next autumn.

Visitors will be able to look at the collections from a special viewing area from the spring of 2002.

John Gall, acting director of Beamish Museum, said: "A lot of our collection is kept out of doors. We'll be able to look after it much better if we can store it indoors. That way we can help ensure the items will survive for another 100 or 200 years. It is giving the past a future.

"Without the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund a great number of the industrial treasures held by both museums would have been endangered by open air or inadequate storage."

A new £1m building housing smaller artefacts and archives is due to open at Beamish next year, following Durham County Council's decision to sell Beamish Hall, a facility the museum has used for many years.