Elsecar Heritage Railway is asking people to pledge votes in a TV poll so it can win £50,000 to complete a railway line, station and mining memorial park.

The group wants to extend the line from Tingle Bridge Lane at Hemingfield and build the station and park at Cortonwood and hopes to get the funding needed from The People's Millions - a grants programme run by the Big Lottery Fund in partnership with ITV.

But first the railway group has to show its project has strong public support.

The group has now been shortlisted, and, on ITV regional news at 6pm on November 25, it goes head to head for voting with another project in Lincolnshire.

On that day, a phone number will be published in the Daily Mirror and viewers can vote for the projects by calling in.

Elsecar Heritage Railway wants to secure the funding to complete its project by the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the 1984-85 miners' strike on March 26.

The Cortonwood plans involve building a platform at the bottom of Morrisons' car park next to the pond with a four-acre picnic area and memorial park to the history of mining in the area behind it.

There will also be a museum railway carriage with sound archive, a playground and waymarked industrial archaeology walks.

Railway chairman Del Tilling, 62, said: "We need hundreds of people to shout 'vote for coal in the People's Poll' and thousands of votes. We want to create the memorial park to say 'thank you' for 300 years of coal mining in the area.

"We owe the coal mining industry and its communities an enormous debt, from the Industrial Revolution through the First and Second World Wars to powering the railways and supplying our energy.

"Coal mining has helped shape the character of Yorkshire people - you had to be made of steel to work in the mines."

Over the past eight years The People's Millions has awarded more than £27.8m to 523 community projects across the UK.

This year it will break the £30m pound mark as it has 76 awards to give away. Each grant is for up to £50,000.