A council will spend thousands of pounds moving a 122-year-old railway track a few feet to help regenerate the seafront.

Work on the Volks Railway, the first electric track to be built in Britain, begins next month, more than a century after the revolutionary service opened to the public carrying passengers from the Palace Pier east along Brighton beach.

One hundred metres of track will be relaid carrying the train along a new S' bend towards the sea and back up to the pavement before straightening out to meet its current route toward the marina.

The realignment will start beyond concrete beach huts halfway along the track and end just before stop at the children's playground.

A new block of children's toilets will go up as part of the £293,000 development which will involve relocating an electricity sub-station and digging out existing concrete blocks.

The line is owned by Brighton and Hove City Council.

Officers claim the diversion will raise the railway's profile among tourists and increase the numbers of people using it. The seasonal service runs between April and September.

The work will make way for the planned £500,000 beach sports centre from Yellowave proposed for the former Peter Pan playground, which is being tipped as another essential component in regeneration plans for the east of the Palace Pier.

Jayne Babb, Brighton and Hove City Council sports and leisure manager, said: "The work to Volks is to make way for the beach sports facility and also to bring the railway into the public realm and make it more visible.

"When Black Rock is developed or events like the sand festival are happening there will be somewhere for people to go and something to take them there.

"It is also about regenerating Madeira Drive, making the seafront more family-orientated and not recreating what we already have between the two piers but providing facilities for residents and visitors to the city."

The Volks Electric Railway was the brainchild of inventor Magnus Volk, from Brighton, and opened in November 1883 with a 300-yard track before being extended a year later, followed by the final addition to Black Rock in 1901.

Work to clear the land for the new track gets under way at the beginning of October after experts from the Health and Safety Executive inspected and approved the proposals.

The owners of 26 fishing lockers bordering the track have received letters about the work, which will involve relocating the huts closer to the pier.

Officers want the work finished by April next year in time for the summer season when the Yellowave development, if approved, would also be close to completion.

Brighton and Hove environment councillor Gill Mitchell said: "The Volks Railway is a vital part of that area east of the pier because it is an attraction but also a means to get to other attractions.

"We want to make more of it and the Volks staff themselves see it as an opportunity."