STANDEDGE Visitor Centre in Marsden will reopen - and it will be free!
The £2m centre, dedicated to the nearby Standedge Tunnel, will open its doors in the summer after being closed for a year because of low visitor numbers.
It is to get a £150,000 facelift to help boost its popularity with people who come to see Britain's longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel.
For the past year, visitor information has been housed in Tunnel End Cottages, near the tunnel mouth.
The cottages are the departure point for boat trips through the tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.
Laurence Morgan, general manager of British Waterways in Yorkshire, said: "Standedge Tunnel was a tremendous feat of engineering. We are confident that the additional investment we are making in visitor facilities will bring positive results."
British Waterways have brought York-based tourism and leisure consultants Continuum on board to help make the attraction successful.
Their first move has been to scrap entry charges into the visitor centre.
Continuum are currently working on new and exciting displays to inform visitors to the centre about the tunnel, which took 16 years to build and which opened in 1811.
They will also be creating an educational space in the centre and plan to create nature trails to link the centre and tunnel with the nearby Tunnel End reservoir.
Outside normal opening hours, British Waterways also plan to make the centre available to Marsden community groups for a small fee.
Continuum will also be working on new signs to help visitors navigate the Standedge site.
A key area of investment will be improving the boat trips through the tunnel, run by members of Huddersfield Canal Society.
Continuum aim to make the `guided tours' given by society members more exciting. Some ideas include getting guides to dress in costume from the canal's golden era and provide better lighting and sound on the boats to help passengers see more of the tunnel.
Tunnel End Cottages will remain as a cafe for visitors.
Mark Bates, of Continuum, said: "The boat trips are the `hero' of the visitor experience. That's what people come for. It is important that we use that asset to the best of our ability.
"We want to enable the visitors to see and feel the tunnel and the lives of the people that worked in it."
The new and improved boat trips will start from April 14 - Good Friday.
They will take place on weekends and from Tuesdays to Thursdays every week until October half-term.
The visitor centre was opened by Prince Charles in 2001 and coincided with the re-opening of Huddersfield Narrow Canal after a
£30m regeneration project.
Janet Baverstock, service manager at British Waterways in Yorkshire, said all the parties involved with Standedge were supportive of the £150,000 improvement scheme.
She said: "We see this as a year of celebrations. It's going to be five years since the tunnel reopened and it's also 200 years since Thomas Telford was appointed to work on the original tunnel project and get it back on track."
