SAKONNET AREA — It turns out there are miles left in those elderly Old Colony and Newport Railway cars after all. The state agreed Friday to back off a decision that would have effectively meant the end of the line for an outfit that has run trains there since 1979.

"It is a great relief, absolutely," said Tiverton resident Donald G. Elbert Jr., a lifelong railroad buff who serves as the executive director of the National Railroad Foundation and Museum, Old Colony's operator.

"This is tremendously important to the many volunteers," Mr. Elbert said Monday. "We don't want to be in a tenuous situation with the state. We want our work to be both valued and lasting."

All aboard! Tiverton resident Donald G. Elbert Jr., executive director of the National Railroad Foundationand Museum, welcomes passengers onto the train Sunday for a ride up the island's west side.

He expressed Old Colony's appreciation to Newport City Manager Jim Smith. Mr. Smith issued the last-minute appeal to the state Department of Transportation in hopes of resolving the situation by continuing to let both lines run independently.

The nonprofit railway, which worked for a quarter century to preserve the state's last vestiges of the old railroad, had all but conceded the game, bowing to a recent decision by the state to operate under the authority of the Newport Dinner Train, a for-profit operation that runs on the same 12.4-mile stretch of track on Aquidneck Island.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation's deal — continue to use the track but operate in a subservient role to the dinner train — was undoable.

"We just can't operate under the control of a for-profit organization," Mr. Elbert said Friday. "We just don't want use ever restricted on the (railroad) line. It's an unfortunate situation."

On Sunday, the rail ran as usual up the island's west shore. It will now take a brief break before resuming for its Santa trips before the holidays.

The line

The National Railroad Foundation and Museum had run two historic trains on the line since 1979, two years after the DOT acquired the track first laid down in 1864 by the Old Colony and Newport Railway, the group that gave the nonprofit line its name. Tickets were cheap — $5 to $11 at last note — and many of the museum's officials served as volunteers on the train.

Since then, the museum has acquired two cars, each of which are among the oldest of their kind in the United States. Its 1904 passenger car once plyed the route between Boston and Bangor, Portland and other Maine stations under the old Boston Maine Line. And the group's 1884 office car is the oldest operating car in the country. It, too, served for years, operating under the Intercolonial Railway, mostly in Canada's maritime provinces. The museum acquired the car from the Narragansett Pier Railroad in 1984.

Mr. Elbert and other Aquidneck residents started the foundation for the love of the rails, and its early proponents included Gardner Seveney, a Portsmouth legislator who lobbied for the group as the state acquired the line in the late 1970s.

"There were so many people who helped," said Mr. Elbert. "They all just had a love of the railroad."

Unlike the Newport Dinner train, which pays the DOT cash payments every year for the use of the line, the museum and Old Colony never had much money, and instead of money "paid" DOT with 500 hours of work on the rail line every year. But Mr. Elbert said the money was never important — "it was preserving the history," he said, "and the beauty of it."

"I've always been interested in railroads," he said. "Then one thing leads to another. You start looking at the bay out the window and you say, 'Wow, isn't that beautiful in the morning.' Then you look at the birds along the line and you say, 'Gee isn't that great.' You start seeing people coming and enjoying it from all over the world. We really value the educational portion of it."

Mr. Elbert said he has never had any problem with the Dinner Train itself, as the cash payments it makes to the state every year help keep the line open. But working in a subservient role, he said, is just undoable. People who called Old Colony's line late last week heard that clearly.

"All trips are canceled until further notice," a recorded message stated.