THE STUFF OF LEGENDS RESTORED TO GLORY AT LAST

Liverpool Post - 18 February 2002

ALF Bergus is the epitome of the sort of gentleman that these sceptred isles are famous for the world over. Beautifully turned out in suit and tie, accompanied by his equally-smart looking wife, Jean, it comes as no surprise to find that he is a retired engine driver.

Not just any old driver either. He was fireman on the locomotive that pulled the train which Celia Johnson endlessly hopped on and off as she pursued her unconsummated affair with Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter.

As a 21-year-old in 1945, he was asked to man the train featured in David Lean's now legendary film, shot at Carnforth station, in Lancashire. Now aged 78, Alf recalls: "I was highly honoured to be asked.Nothing like this had ever happened in Carnforth before.

"Filming was done overnight while the railway was quiet. Most nights we'd start at 10pm after the Barrow Mail had gone. Normally we'd finish at about 5am, or occasionally at 7.30am. Once we got back to the shed and two extras were fast asleep in one of the compartments.

"Celia Johnson was one of the friendliest women you could wish to meet. She made it her business every night to come up to the engine and say, 'Good evening gentlemen, how are you tonight?' "Once during a pause in filming she said she'd love to come up into the cab and stayed for half an hour chatting and thanking us for our patience while they did the retakes.

I said to her, 'You'd better sit down, you can either sit on the fireman's seat or on my knee while I sit on the seat'."Anyway, she sat on the seat which was very clean, as I'm always tidy that way, and she was very generous in giving us cigarettes. She was very attractive. That's when I realised I was a man!" he chuckles.His wife, Jean, chips in: "It was before he met me."

WHILE Stanley Holloway was very approachable, Alf thought that Trevor Howard, in contrast, was very aloof and self-obsessed.

Alf's memories were stirred by the reopening of the first stage of a pounds 1.6m restoration of the station, after decades of dereliction. What is so impressive is that ordinary, local people have got together and in their spare time raised funds and organised the restoration. Peter Yates, chairman of Carnforth Station Trust, says: "It's a stepping stone to bring both the station and Carnforth back to life."

He should be proud. Even partly refurbished, the station already approaches a condition worthy of the countless Japanese and US Brief Encounter fans who make the pilgrimage.

Typically, nobody of any influence in Britain (although the film constantly tops polls for all-time favourite films) felt the same way until now.

THE STUFF OF LEGENDS RESTORED TO GLORY AT LAST - The Liverpool Daily Post & Echo 18 February 2002

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