NEWPORT - Old Colony & Newport Railway won a reprieve on Friday when the state's secretary of transportation agreed to review a new proposed operating agreement that would keep the railway running on Sundays.

Volunteer members of the railway this past week feared they would have to shut down on Friday.

With the help of Newport City Manager James C. Smith, two railway members drafted an agreement with the state that would allow Old Colony to keep running their train twice on Sundays during most of the year, and not interfere with the more extensive operations of the separate Newport Dinner Train.

The director of the state Department of Transportation has given permission for the railway to operate this Sunday at its regularly scheduled times of 11:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. Final details of the operating agreement between Old Colony and the state will be worked out in the near future, according to Old Colony volunteer Peter Martin.

"The Old Colony will continue to operate as scheduled this month, and hopefully resume operations in January," Smith said. "We believe we have the basis for an agreement in place now."

The Newport Dinner Train begins running its Santa Express on Saturdays and Sundays on Nov. 27-28 and continues until the weekend before Christmas, and Old Colony does not want to interfere with that, said Donald G. Elbert, Old Colony's executive director.

DOT officials earlier this week presented Old Colony with a state-drafted operating agreement that railway members said was so restrictive that it would have forced them to cease operations.

The state told the members they must sign the operating agreement with DOT by Friday or face legal action if they try to use the rail line.

Elbert and Martin worked with Smith to come up with an alternative operating agreement between the railway and RIDOT that the railway believes it can live with.

Smith said he forwarded that agreement to Secretary of Transportation James Capaldi on Friday and Capaldi read it. He told Smith the agreement appears to address the concerns of the state and the department's attorneys will review it.

"If it is amenable to all parties, we hope for a settlement," said Dana Nolfe, RIDOT's spokeswoman. "We have been working on this for a few years. It's a public-safety issue."

Elbert and Martin said Old Colony has been operating for 25 years and has an excellent safety record.

The Old Colony & Newport Railway is a nonprofit educational and tourist operation that runs trains on Sundays at 11:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. Under the agreement it drafted Friday, the railway would continue with this schedule Jan. 16 through Nov. 20, 2005, except for Easter Sunday, Mother's Day and Father's Day, June 12 and June 19. Those are Sundays when the Newport Dinner Train operates.

The Newport Dinner Train, a private firm owned by Robert J. Andrews of Portsmouth, operates trains throughout the year on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, as well as private charters. The dinner train under Andrews' ownership is in its eighth year of operating on the Newport secondary line, which runs from the depot at the Goat Island Connector in Newport to the Sakonnet River railroad bridge in Portsmouth, a distance of 12.4 miles. The line runs along the western shore of Aquidneck Island.

In the agreement, Old Colony concedes that if there is any conflict in scheduling, "the Newport Dinner Train shall have operational priority on the track." Old Colony agrees to provide 300 hours annually of documented volunteer time maintaining the track.

Old Colony objected to the operating agreement proposed by RIDOT because it felt it would be put completely under the auspices of the Newport Dinner Train. Members considered the wording too restrictive.

Elbert and Martin said legislators such as state representatives Bruce J. Long, R-Middletown, and Paul W. Crowley, D-Newport, and State Sen. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, all worked with state officials to pave the way for an eventual agreement that could allow both railways to operate.