East Cambridgeshire Council has applied for a £40,000 grant to fund a study on the station, which was destroyed in June 1944 after a fire broke out on the lead wagon of a heavy ammunition train.

This step forward follows a 20 year campaign by residents to reinstate a station in Soham.

A council spokesman said the authority had put in a bid to Cambridgeshire Horizons, which aims to drive forward sustainable communities, last week and was now awaiting the outcome.

He said they hoped to find out in the near future whether their application had been successful.

"We have put a bid in for Cambridgeshire Horizons to fund a feasibility study into the reopening of the station but we don't know yet the outcome of that bid," he said.

"If we have the funding we will be able to talk more about the feasibility study."

At a Soham Town Council meeting on Monday, district councillor Tony Parramint told members the study would likely take about five or six weeks to carry out.

He said the project would look at areas including potential site layout, timetables and infrastructure.

Fellow Soham district councillor Mark Duckworth told town councillors that Network Rail had agreed and offered to carry out the work required for the study and that the council just needed to find the money.

"We are taking the railway station very seriously," he said.

Cllr Parramint added: "It is something we have been working on for an amount of time. We got £40,000 to develop the gateways and we want as much luck with this £40,000."

The railway station has been included in the Soham Vision Masterplan.

Talks on reopening it began again last year following proposals by Network Rail to upgrade the line through Soham to allow freight trains between Felixstowe and Nuneaton to avoid the Olympic Games' site.

Liberal Democrat activist Charles Warner, who attended the town council meeting to update members on his campaigning work, said he was delighted the council was doing something.