The famous backdrop to cinema's greatest portrayal of stifled British emotions, Brief Encounter, was reopened yesterday with a cosier emphasis on that other national icon: tea.
Rather than hiring modern, silver-screen equivalents of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard to do the honours, the organisers asked the waitress from the film to cut the ribbon at the sumptuously restored Carnforth railway station, near Lancaster.
The period piece, chosen by David Lean as the setting for Brief Encounter's chaste but impossible middle class love affair, has been rescued from years of decline. Original fittings - including the station clock, a significant part of the 1945 film - have been tracked down and returned to their original places in a project financed by local fundraising and Railtrack, before its demise.
The attention to detail was praised by the retired actor Margaret Barton, whose character, Beryl, supplied consoling cuppas to Johnson and Howard as their furtive meetings in the buffet led to the inevitable conclusion that they had to part.
"It is known all over the world. It is utterly amazing," she said of the location.
Ms Barton was part of a crew which included Stanley Holloway as the station porter, Albert Godby, another central character in the film.
Renamed Milford Junction for the film, Carnforth was reckoned by rail enthusiasts to be a perfect example of a small British station. It was chosen as the setting for Noel Coward's love story partly because it was far enough away from large cities for the production's lighting not to attract German bombers.
The station lost much of its importance after the Beeching cuts in the late 1960s, and 10 years later its west coast main line platforms were closed because of electrification.
The £1.5m restoration has turned much of the station into a rail heritage centre, but trains still run to Lancaster.
"We can't rest on our laurels," said the Carnforth Railway and Station Trust chairman, Peter Yates. "Our ambition must be to get the west coast main line trains to stop here once again."
