On Preserving Our Heritage.

[Vince, Charlie and Sam]

Brief Encounter's famous tea room setting at Carnforth station is lovingly restored to its former glory, reports Nigel Bunyan


It looks uncannily as it did when Brief Encounter was first released nearly 60 years ago: the table at which Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard first drank tea together, the wall lights, the till, even the bar-top bottle opener.

So authentic is the refurbishment of the most famous railway refreshment room in Britain that an elderly visitor recently burst into tears.

"Son," he told Peter Yates, who is the chairman of the Carnforth Station and Railway Trust, "this is exactly the way I remember it. This is where I passed by with my friend on my way to war. We had tea and a sandwich here. I came home after the war, he didn't."



Mr Yates, 56, is among a group of local people who decided a decade ago to restore the station to its former glory.

"We're not railway enthusiasts and we're not film nuts," he said. "We're just local people who have seen too much of our heritage trampled to the ground."




COMMENT. Quite.

Vince, Charlie and Sam.