Walking along Platform 1 at Carnforth Station, a girl can’t help but hope for a speck of grit to land in her eye.

This was just another railway station, in a small town in Lancashire, until David Lean arrived 70 years ago with a film crew and a big-name cast.

In Lean’s classic 1945 film Brief Encounter, the station is Milford Junction, where an ordinary suburban housewife and a dashing doctor find love. Based on Noel Coward’s one-act play Still Life, the film is an exquisite study of two people trapped by pre-war social convention.

Each married to someone else, they can’t be together. It’s easy to mock the stiffness and clipped vowels of that lost era in Brief Encounter, but you’d need a heart of stone not to be moved by Celia Johnson’s haunting portrayal of giddy love turning quickly to aching misery.

Carnforth was chosen as the film’s location by the Ministry of War Transport because it was remote enough to avoid blackout regulations – filming took place at night between 10pm and 6am so as not to interfere with daytime trains.

Today the station attracts film fans from around the world, eager to recite classic lines on the platform or sip tea in the Brief Encounter Refreshment Room.

Once a busy railway junction, linking the North West to Leeds, Carnforth was eventually reduced to a branch station, following Dr Beeching’s shake-up in the 1960s, and its buildings fell into disrepair.

The Carnforth Station and Railway Trust set about raising £1.5 million for a renovation and the station was eventually restored to its 1940s glory.

The Heritage Centre, which opened in 2003, is steeped in railway nostalgia, with exhibitions paying tribute to the station’s history and the people who shaped it.

Dotted about among the battered suitcases are a guard’s whistle, a station master’s hat, and pieces of track gauge and signal arms salvaged from platforms that were closed down and removed. On display are stories of locals who worked on the railway, and striking photographs capturing Carnforth’s steam era and life as a busy West Coast main line. Further displays pay tribute to Carnforth’s contribution to the First and Second World Wars, and explore the social history of the railway and the town.

The centre also contains the Furness and Midland Hall, once the station’s booking office, and a more recent addition is the Bateman Gallery, housing temporary exhibitions A visit to Carnforth Station wouldn’t be complete with a cuppa in the Brief Encounter Refreshment Room, re-creating “the most ordinary place in the world” where Laura and Alec first meet, “that ordinary day”.

Sitting at a little wooden table with a pot of tea, I thought of the kind stranger turning from the counter to reveal “rather a nice face”, before taking a fateful look at the grit lodged in Laura’s eye.

Those scenes were shot in a London studio set bearing a close resemblance to the real Carnforth Station tea room. The Refreshment Room, which was opened by Margaret Barton, who played young waitress Beryl in the film, has been faithfully restored, with a vintage till, hot water boiler and pretty cakestands on the original wooden counter and charming photographs of old Carnforth on the walls. It has a regular programme of entertainment and events, and can be hired for parties and wedding receptions.

The centre also houses a little cinema where Brief Encounter can be watched daily from the comfort of theatre seats donated by the Winter Gardens at nearby Morecambe. On the walls is a collage of stills from the film and snippets of a letter by Celia Johnson revealing that she has grown “awfully fond of Carnforth Station”.

She writes of the station master, “a large man in a stern bowler hat renowned for his grumpiness”, sitting her by the fire in his office during a bitterly cold February night’s filming.

Browsing in the gift shop, we could hear the film being screened nearby. It seemed rather fitting to be choosing Milford Junction coasters and Trevor Howard fridge magnets as a doomed love affair unfolded a few yards away.

The friendly shop staff must know every line by now.

Making our way to the main station building, where a cosy micro pub, The Snug, is tucked away on a platform, we walked beneath the Victorian clock which features in the film. Time is the enemy in Brief Encounter – eventually Alec would take the 5.40 out of Laura’s life forever and she would be left in despair in a cloud of steam on Platform 1.

Factfile

  • Carnforth Heritage Centre is at Carnforth Station, Warton Street, Carnforth, Lancashire.
  • Trains run from Shipley Station to Carnforth.
  • The heritage centre is open daily, 10am to 4pm. Admission is free, and donations are welcome. The tea room is open daily, 9am to 4pm.
  • For more information, call (01524) 735165, e-mail sdo@carnforth-station.co.uk, or visit carnforthstation.co.uk