Brief Encounter - one of the classic romances of all time.
Filmed in the blackouts of 1945, express trains arrived in Carnforth at night to be met by blazing lights. Reassured "down the line" that all was well, filmmaker David Lean asked them to race through the station with all the power, speed, light and smoke that the trains could muster. After four years of war and strict limitations to speed and light, the drivers were more than happy to help.
Celia Johnson recalls, 'We had fun, quite often, during the station scenes in Lancashire, because it was during wartime, and we had to be away from the coast because it was pre-D-day and one was allowed to have lights up there on the station. The trains used to come through at night, and in those days they were lovely steam trains, and they screamed in the distance, a high-pitched scream at seeing our lights on at the station, and then they'd come hurtling through, all lovely smoke and flame flying behind them. We used to stay up all night in order to hear this and the Scottish expresses go through.'
Filming had to take place at night between 10pm - 6am, so as not to
disrupt the normal daytime running of the trains. This worked to an
advantage as then filming could continue without interruption and the
dark wintry sky and cold night air added atmosphere and beauty to the
scene. The Ministry of War Transport chose Carnforth Station as it was
remote and therefore safe from attack.
A recognisable feature from the film at Carnforth Station is its grand clock. As filming took place at night, the time shown on the clock would be wrong. The original clock appeared blurred on camera, so a replacement clock face was used to distinguish the time more clearly.
Lean's challenge in making Brief Encounter was to maintain the theme of reminiscence and to liberate the play from its confined setting of the railway station. He made a clever use of flashback in the beginning of the film, with Laura in her sitting room, facing her husband. The sitting room vanishes except Laura and we see the scene at the refreshment room with herself waiting for her train. The audience is drawn into her secret past, whilst she sits in the safe confines of her domestic life.
Rachamaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 provides the soul of the love Laura
and Alec are trying to repress and is cleverly and rhythmically used
throughout the film - from the radio we first hear it as Laura begins
to narrate, to the end when she is lost in thought and does not realise
that her husband has been looking at her.
The love story is believable and realistic because the couple involved are two ordinary people. The heroine is not stunningly beautiful, nor is the hero a chisel-faced hunk. Instead Johnson and Howard possessed something better - an honest, down-to-earth quality that made them attractive - a quality that few stars possess today.
In 2000, Alison Evans, who was then a Post Graduate student at the University of Plymouth, approached the Friends of Carnforth Station to ask if she could produce a website about Carnforth Station , as one her modules towards an MA in Publishing.
This website is the website that she produced.
The original website was created in 2000., and apart from one or two factual corrections (different telephone numbers / contact addreses etc.) The website is as created.
Since then the Station rejuvenation has been completed, and the station is now open as a fully fuctional railway station, and a visitor center. For the latest information about the station, please visit