WORK on restoring Donald Campbell's Bluebird is set to start on January 4 - the anniversary of the crash which killed him.

The Bluebird in which Donald Campbell died in 1967 was built at Samlesbury Engineering.

And now the link with East Lancashire will be maintained in the restoration project.

PDS engineering, a hi-tech firm based in Cliffe Street, Nelson, which has already worked on the land-speed record-breaking car Thrust SSC, will be part of the team working to get the famous craft restored and on display within two years.

Pendle engineer John Getty, who is at the heart of the project, said they were arranging for delivery of the boat and that work would start in the New Year.

He said: "We are waiting to take delivery of the craft and will then start work on January 4, the anniversary of the accident.

"We thought that was quite a symbolic time to get to work on the project." The wrecked boat was salvaged from the bottom of Coniston Water, in the Lake District, in 2001, 34 years after it crashed at more than 300mph.

Earlier this month Donald Campbell's daughter Gina announced that, after two failed bids for Heritage Lottery Fund cash, she plans to go it alone to raise the £750,000 needed to fully restore it and place it in a special exhibition room at the Ruskin Museum, Coniston.

Bluebird K7 has been housed in a South Shields workshop, at the home of Bill Smith, the amateur diver and underwater surveyor who discovered it.

Its jet engines were badly damaged during its time underwater, but its frame remains intact and relatively well-preserved, and Mr Smith is personally funding some of the project's cost.