Rail museum bosses were stunned when they received a speeding ticket from police.

For the prosecution notice was for a 1948 three-wheeled Scammell, which was in bits in the museum workshop and hadn't moved for years! Greater Manchester Police said cameras had captured the vehicle doing 44mph in a 30mph zone along Bury Road, Bolton.

"Even if the Scammell was in full working order it wouldn't be capable of doing anything like 44mph -- it wasn't built for speed," said Jackie Cope, curator of the Museum of Rail Travel at Ingrow.

"The vehicle -- a mechanical horse -- is currently having its engine restored by our volunteers, and is certainly not roadworthy.

"When we received the prosecution notice we were filled with a mixture of horror and amusement, and there was a lot of laughter."

She contacted the police, who on more closely scrutinising their photographic evidence realised that the vehicle captured on camera -- although carrying the same registration number as the museum's Scammell -- was in fact Belgian.

Police have now confirmed that proceedings have been dropped.

The Scammell has been on loan to the museum -- owned by the Vintage Carriages Trust -- from sugar refiners Tate & Lyle for over a decade.

It is hoped that when restoration is complete the vehicle will make appearances at rallies and shows.

Museum trustee Paul Holroyd, who worked for 21 years on the civilian team at the Metropolitan Police and for some of that time supervised the issuing of notices of intended prosecution, said CCTV footage proved beyond doubt the museum's innocence.

He said: "We pointed out to GMP that whatever alleged evidence they had, we had 24-hour CCTV footage from our museum's security system which proved beyond all doubt that the Scammell mechanical horse was safely inside our museum building at the time of the alleged offence.

"The first Scammell mechanical horses were such basic vehicles that when they were first introduced, they didn't have a speedometer -- merely a light which illuminated when the speed exceeded 18 miles per hour!"

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "This is an extremely unique case in that the vehicle stopped was registered as a foreign vehicle but had the same plate as the Scammell mechanical horse. Once the problem was brought to our attention, we made further inquiries and the matter was rectified within days."