A £4.2 MILIION facelift at the National Railway Museum at York was today shortlisted for a major national project management award.

And as staff celebrated the news, Mountie Narc Dureau headed "due East" to the museum to launch a spectacular exhibition.

The facelift is in line for the Project of the Year accolade at the annual awards of the Association for Project Management in London on June 15.

A new wing, called The Works, financed partly by the Heritage Lottery Fund was completed in 15 months by Turner & Townsend Project Management of Sheffield - and since it opened last July has boosted even further the number of visitors annually. Attendance figures last April stood at nearly 470,000.

Mountie Marc, a tour planner for the world-famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride, arrived at the museum on horseback to raise the Canadian flag in preparation for the opening of an exhibition of giant railway carriage murals.

His arrival in style heralded the start of the exhibition which will run until September 24.

It has been organised in conjunction with the Canadian High Commission, and the country's High Commissioner, the Hon Roy MacLaren.

The 14 foot by four foot paintings were originally used to decorate luxury stainless steel railcars that travelled on the picturesque transcontinental rail journey linking east and west Canada.

Commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1953, they depict scenes from the country's famous parks, including Mount Tremblant in Quebec, Strathcona in British Columbia, Stribley in Ontario and Banff in Alberta.