A plan to restore a rusting steam engine has been put forward as a proposal to save the ‘Caley’ rail works from closure and keep jobs at the site.

Work at the St Rollox site, in Springburn is due to end this month and the remaining workers made redundant.

It is understood an engineering company is showing interest in taking over the site but not in time to save the workers’ jobs.

READ MORE: Sturgeon says Government can't nationalise Caley

However, Paul Sweeney, the Labour MP for Glasgow North East, said that taking the engine from Summerlee Heritage Museum could save jobs and act as a bridge until the site is taken over and regular maintenance work restarted.

The plan is to take the Garratt “springbok” locomotive, which was built in Springburn 70 years ago for the South African railways, from the museum in Coatbridge and restore it.

Mr Sweeney said it would mean state aid rules do not apply as it is a heritage project and not subject to the same commercial rules.

READ MORE: Union plan to save Caley

The work at St Rollox is due to end on July 26.

He said: “We are totally confident that the Garret Project could be the lifeline needed to sustain employment at the historic Springburn Railway works.

“The Garratt steam engine was built in Springburn in the 1950s and came back to Scotland from South Africa in the 1980s abut has been rusting away in Summerlee for more than 30 years.

“It’s not going to be subject to the sort of state aid restrictions that the government have claimed would restrict their opportunity to put in work to the site.”

The MP said Summerlee have agreed in principle to a restoration project.

He added: “It’s there, ready to be used if the Scottish Government are prepared to commit to this idea.

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“It not just a project for the sake of creating work. We know there is a railway engineering company interested in taking over the site but it’s going to take several months maybe a year to finalise the deal.”

The Scottish Government has previously said that sate aid rules mean it can’t take the yard over and it is also unable to put work into the yard because it does not control the maintenance contracts as ScotRail leases trains for its fleet and the owners are responsible for the repair and maintenance contracts.

Unite the Union is hoping a deal can be done to keep the site in operation.