A Brief Encounter.... Visitors come even from Japan to see a town whose claim to fame is a romance filmed there - in 1945. By Philip Dunn For the people of Carnforth, it was just a brief encounter with the stars when the film-makers came to town back in 1945. But today, more than 50 years on, the film Brief Encounter, much of it shot on the platform of Carnforth railway station, has achieved a cult status that attracts visitors from all over the world to this small Lancashire town. Railway buffs and film fanatics come to seek out the locations of David Lean's black-and-white classic about two people who meet in the station's refreshment room and fall in love. Romantics come for a heady dose of nostalgia, or perhaps to kiss beneath the Roman numerals of the station clock that has hung above the platform since 1888. Journalists come to interview people like Elaine Maudsley - she fell for her future husband beneath that clock - and Nora Cisinski. Both were extras in the film. Photographers come to take pictures of Alfred Bergus, who was the fireman on the steam locomotive that appeared in some of the film's most evocative scenes. Alfred has kept a record of all his interviews since the first newspaper reporter called almost 20 years ago. Starting with The Morecambe Visitor, they are all logged in a dog-eared exercise book. Alfred has since appeared in every paper from Lancashire Life to The Times, The Guardian and the Daily Mail. He's been on the BBC and ITV to tell how he stoked the boilers of his 2-6-4 Stanier tank engine and how he kept the steam pressure low to avoid "blowing off"; making a row while the engine was waiting out of camera shot. He tells how the train was driven in and out of the station perhaps 100 times or more throughout the nights of filming. And he tells of the film star Trevor Howard, and shows off his autographs of leading lady Celia Johnson, and actor Stanley Holloway, who played the ticket collector. Alf has become a celebrity. The film Brief Encounter was adapted from a story by Noel Coward. Trevor Howard, who played Dr Alec Harvey, and Celia Johnson, Laura, are strangers, thrown together by chance in the refreshment room of Milford Junction station (played by Carnforth station). Both are happily married, but the buffet meetings become frequent, and the two fall in love. They go for drives and dine together. Celia is ridden with guilt, but is madly in love. Eventually they part for good when Alec accepts a job overseas. Laura returns to her husband. It's a real tear-jerker, which today might seem terribly naive, but in the more innocent days of 1945 actually pushed back the boundaries and broke taboos surrounding extramarital affairs. With its plummy English accents and oh-so-proper dialogue, a viewing of Brief Encounter can feel like peeping into a time warp; the film is very much a product of its period. "Please be sensible. Help me be sensible. We mustn't behave like this," pleads Laura. "Too late to be sensible," says Alec as the lovers lunge into a smacking kiss that could have knocked their teeth out. And then the nostalgia kicks in - 10d for a brandy in the station buffet where the waitress picks up the Bath buns by hand; real bobbies on the beat; the barrel organist who thanks Laura when she gives him 6d; Alec asking the non-politically correct question, Mrs or Miss? And then jumping behind the wheel of a sports car after a champagne lunch. It's all there - steam trains, pigeon baskets on porters' trolleys, prams built like tanks, the Kardomah Cafe, the lending library at Boots the Chemist. The strange thing is that now, in 2001, a new generation has discovered it all over again. They are loving it, and they are heading for Carnforth. They come from all over Britain and as far afield as Australia, America and Japan - Brief Encounter is big in Japan - and Japanese tourists are often seen snapping each other beneath the clock, and looking disappointedly at the rubble that was once the famous refreshment room on which the set was based. Now, thanks to the persistence of enterprising local people, Carnforth station is to be regenerated and the town is preparing to cash in on its Brief Encounter claim to fame. The refreshment room is to be re-created, and the platforms and station buildings are to be themed in the 1940s period. The original mechanism and dials of that famous barrel clock are to be restored, having been tracked down to the south of England. It will all cost a lot of money, but Peter Yates, Chairman of Carnforth Station and Railway Trust, is confident. "Work has already started," says Peter. "The first phase is due for completion later this year. The station has been in a dreadful state for years, and there was a lot of talk about demolition. Then one day I found five Japanese tourists photographing each other beneath the clock. I realised that tourism could save the station. We have about �1 million pledged to us altogether. Railtrack has agreed to help and will be putting up over �500,000. We've been turned down by the Lottery, which is a great shame because the whole town will benefit when the work is done," says 54-year-old Peter, who runs a local garage. Michael Chorley is Chairman (21/9/1999 to 26/9/2002) of The Friends of Carnforth Station, which has 260 members in 10 countries - there's even a member in the Cook Islands. Michael is a railway civil engineer, and looked after the Forth Bridge before he retired. He now travels the world as a railway consultant and spends his spare time raising cash to get the station rejuvenated.
"Carnforth wouldn't have existed without the railway," says Michael. "The town is halfway between London and Glasgow and in the age of steam it was very important. The Royal Scot used to stop here to change engines and crews. Then there was the Coronation Scot in the 1930s. Beeching closed the main-line north-south station and now you can only travel east-west. We are trying to get the main-line platform reopened and that will really bring people in." At the Royal Station Hotel, where the film crew stayed in 1945, diners have a Brief Encounter menu. There is "Little Shunter's" black pudding for starters, or "Hot Signal Station Burgers". In "Celia Johnson's Fish Selection" you can eat "Dr Harvey's Healthy Fillets" and "Milford Junction Scampi". And if that fails to whet your appetite, there's always "Flames of Passion" Cajun chicken among the "Under the Clock Specialities". Jane Thornber, the hotel's manager, watched the film five times to get the names and ideas for the menu. But the hotel has another attraction that brings in enthusiasts, and that's Nora Cisinski. She had a part in the film. It was only a small part, in fact even Nora admits she can't really tell which is her when she watches the film. But she's in there somewhere, sure enough. Nora, now well into her seventies, still works behind the bar, and loves to talk about her life as a "film star".
"I was just a young girl working in a blouse factory. Before we started filming I used to help the WVS serve jam-jar tea to the soldiers in the troop trains. We had to use jam jars because when the trains pulled out we lost the cups. The film extras' task was to make the station look busy. We had to run up and down the subway on to the platform. I put lots of make-up on, but I had to wipe it all off before I went home. My dad was very strict, you know," laughs Nora. "There was one young lass, Mabel Capstick, who was very pretty. She looked like Margaret Lockwood. Anyway, she was always getting pushed to the front where she could be seen. One of the directors took a shine to her and asked her to go to London for a part in Fanny by Gaslight, but when we saw it at The Roxy, you couldn't see her face at all. I think Mabel settled down and got married after that. "All the filming was done at night when the local trains had stopped, and I was paid half-a-crown. I spent it on a threepenny trip to Morecambe, went to the Winter Gardens for sixpence and bought some sweets." Elaine Maudsley was also an extra, and is almost the first person to appear in the film. Her shadowy outline can be seen pacing up and down as ticket collector Stanley Holloway walks across the track and climbs up the platform. In fact, that opening shot was a retake because in the first shot Elaine was standing too close and Stanley grabbed her ankle for a joke. "Stanley was terrified of walking across the lines," says Elaine, "I think his little joke helped relieve the tension." For two years during the Second World War, Elaine worked in the real Carnforth refreshment room. That's where she met her future husband, John. The couple had many a romantic cuddle beneath the station clock and John would whistle Smoke Gets in Your Eyes when the steam trains went past. "For my part in the film I was paid 35 shillings, I got a free meal each night and was given a few sweets. That was quite something then, because everything was rationed," recalls Elaine. There's no rationing at Robert Maddison's butcher's shop on Market Street, just up from the station. His Brief Encounter pork sausages are proving a great success. Mr Maddison's new sausage contains five herbs, and according to the display ticket, its "simple authentic flavour clearly reflects the charming naivety of the relationship shared by Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter".
Mr Maddison's wife
wrote that, but he's obviously a bit of a romantic himself. "I've watched the film
quite a few times. It's lovely, and it reminds me of my youth and the days when I was
courting. It's very romantic, not a bit like these days when it's just half a lager then
jump into bed," says the butcher, as he stands at his sausage machine, extruding
another Brief Encounter sausage into a natural gut sausage skin. A Brief Encounter....56 Years On.
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