The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Saturday October 18 2003

The following leader erred in saying trains no longer stop at Carnforth station, site of the classic film, Brief Encounter. They do.

This week's artistic events could not be more of a contrast. Go to the Tate Modern - which looked more like a railway terminal yesterday, such were the crowds - for a close encounter with Olafur Eliasson's sublime Weather Project with its mesmeric sun seen through mist and mirrors. Or visit Carnforth railway station in Lancashire, complete with the restored tea room that launched a million tears in David Lean's 1945 classic, Brief Encounter, a film that still gets to parts of the eyeball that others fail to reach. This is a rare case of reality imitating art: a black and white film well over 50 years old, set in a station at which trains no longer stop, has generated what can be regarded as a piece of installation art of the kind that might well be housed in the Tate Modern's giant bowels.

Even when it was filmed all was not as it appeared. The director had an imitation of the celebrated refreshment room constructed in Denham film studios in London and transported to Carnforth to make some scenes more realistic. The station clock was given a much bigger face so it would be more visible in the film. Shots of the express train hurtling through were filmed at Carnforth and then the negatives were reversed so the train could also be seen going in the opposite direction, a fact that, as film buffs noted, meant it was running on the wrong track. Damien Hirst could not have done better.

David Lean, the director, and Noel Coward, the author, would be delighted to know that the sun has never set on the film they made so long ago. No such longevity, alas, awaits the Tate's rising sun. It is a temporary exhibit, part of Unilever's mind-expanding series of sponsorships, and there are few places in the world that could show it off in this way - though David Lean would doubtless have found a role for it in a colour remake of his classic. Meanwhile Carnforth will remain a new kind of tourist attraction and a work of installation art in its own right. Whether it will still be deemed to be art if a local lobby succeeds in its campaign to get the trains to stop there again is quite another question.