Bradford's debt-ridden transport discovery park is not expected to open as planned next month.

And the future of the £11.5m Transperience tourist attraction in Low Moor is now uncertain, with speculation that it might never open again.

Three buyers are interested in the site, which has been in the hands of administrators Coopers & Lybrand.

Two of the bidders are interested in retaining Transperience, but not in its present format and the third wants to redevelop the site into factories and warehouses.

The news comes less than three years since the park was opened by the West Yorkshire Transport Museum Trust amid much ceremony.

Chairman of the trust, David Sheard, said: "We are very concerned about the future of Transperience. It will be a shame if it does go.

"We will be particularly concerned about the preservation of the Spen Valley railway line and the vehicles and artefacts on the site. We have no powers but we are putting pressure on the administrators to keep it going."

Coopers & Lybrand has been charged with selling the site as a going concern, but its priority is to pay back the creditors, who are owed more than £1m by the trust.

Owen Claxton, the manager of the business recovery and insolvency department for Coopers & Lybrand in Leeds, said: "Transperience will not reopen under its present format. We have struggled very hard to see how we could make Transperience work but it became blatantly clear that it could not do so in its present format."

Negotiations are at an advanced stage with the bidders, and a sale could be made within the next month. But Mr Claxton would not say which potential buyer was favoured for business confidentiality reasons.

Bradford Councillor Stanley King, a former trustee of Transperience, today said he was dismayed by the revelations.

"I have heard speculation that it was not going to reopen again and that is a great tragedy because a lot of public money was invested in it from the beginning," he said.

"The whole project was very well carried out, the quality of what they have got there is very good, but it has never attracted sufficient public support."

The future of the complex was plunged into doubt last year after it emerged it had run up debts of almost £1m.

The attraction was placed in the hands of administrators in February 1997, but despite a six-month survival plan and new attractions to bring in more visitors, they failed to find a buyer to take over the venture.

Transperience was closed at the end of October for a winter break, but the plan was to reopen it again this spring with a new name and operating on just one-third of its existing 15-acre site.

The intention was to sell off the remaining land to raise cash to pay off the park's creditors.

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