A popular working museum which houses the world’s largest working mill engine is to battle it out for a People’s Millions prize of £48,000 in a TV phone competition this week.

Trustees of Ellenroad steam museum near Rochdale hope they’ll be able to use the Big Lottery Fund cash to fund a pioneering scheme to encourage young people into engineering.

The cash will also be used to restore the engine house to its former glory when it was once part of one of Lancashire’s largest cotton mills.

Chairman of Ellenroad committee Bernard Rostron says if Ellenroad wins, youngsters will get the chance to renovate a 100 horsepower single cylinder steam engine which weighs in at 30 tons.

The 22 foot long engine - donated by steam enthusiast John Wilson - is currently in 10 huge pieces at a Halifax workshop.

"We feel that young people nowadays find it hard to relate to their industrial heritage – which is a shame," he said.

"It’s a symptom of a general decline in the popularity of design and technology subjects like metalwork in schools."

Ellenroad is staffed by volunteers who lovingly run the colossal ‘Victoria and Alexandra’ twin-tandem compound engine once a month.

The engine can deliver 3000 horsepower which is enough to run twenty thousand 100W light bulbs. Its flywheel is as tall as a house and weighs 82 tons.

In 1985 the mill was demolished, leaving only the engine and boiler house. A year later, the Ellenroad Trust was formed.

He added: "If there aren’t enough engineers coming through then that surely is a worrying prospect for British industry.

"And the volunteers at Ellenroad are getting older too so we need to find enthusiastic young people to look after the engines when we’ve retired.

"We hope that if we entice them in they’ll fall in love with the engines just as we did."

Ellenroad will take on seven other causes to compete in the TV contest for Big Lottery Fund money worth £5million.

The Ellenroad broadcast in the Peoples Millions will be broadcast on ITV Granada's evening regional news on Wednesday.

If they do not win on the night, then the project could still get some cash if they emerge as the 'lucky loser' with the highest number of phone votes.

Find out more at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/northwest.