Love story station for tourist map

Recent view of the platform where "Laura" was filmed catching her train and meeting "Doctor Alec Harvey"

By CNN's Graham Jones

CARNFORTH, England (CNN) -- It was one of the great romantic movies of all time.

Scripted by Noel Coward, directed by David Lean, "Brief Encounter" charted an illicit love affair between an English suburban wife (Celia Johnson) and an impetuous married doctor (Trevor Howard).

Seen as daring at the time (1944) it was set to the dramatic, moody music of Rachmaninov and filmed amid much real-life steam at a fictional London railway station -- Milford Junction -- where, switching trains, the couple met.

Much of the passionate love story improbably centred round the tearoom at Milford Junction, with the backdrop of an imperious Joyce Carey serving stale bath buns to soldiers wearily plodding through.

The real station in the movie was nowhere near London -- filming was switched 250 miles away to Carnforth, northwestern England, to escape the threat of German V1 and V2 rockets.

Now nearly 60 years on, the station at Carnforth where the historic movie was made is being restored to its romantic glory -- with the whole station being thrown open as a "Brief Encounter" experience for tourists.

They are even looking for someone to run the old tearoom -- though not a Joyce Carey, and the cakes will definitely not be stale -- says project manager Irvine Taylor of the Friends of Carnforth Station.

"We are looking for a professional organisation to take over he running of the site," he says.

As well as welcoming visitors from Germany, the Friends of Carnforth Station group now boasts members from California, Australia and South Africa, and ''Brief Encounter'' has a cult following in Japan.

It was the sight of five Japanese tourists taking snapshots of each other beneath the station clock (now tracked down to a shop in west London and being restored) which led Peter Yates of the "Friends" group to initiate a £1.2 million ($1.6m) campaign to save the buildings.

Taylor says Phase One will be complete by November or December with a full opening in the spring of 2002.

"We are even looking at the possibility of using actors so that when a trainload of visitors arrive they can go to the refreshment room and find Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard there having a cup of tea," he says.

Taylor says he hopes that even if Brief Encounter fails to excite coming generations, the refurbished station will still serve as a gateway to the Lake District and a memorial to the hertiage of a once-important railway town.

Back to the tearoom (scene of a second romantic intrigue in the film between Miss Carey and stationmaster, Stanley Holloway).

Elaine Maudsley, 19 at the time, worked in the real version and, meeting the film crew there, was given a walk-on part in the movie.

Now 76, she had her own romantic encounter there which led to something more permanent, meeting her future husband John who worked in a local munitions factory.

"I expect they will ask me to take some part when it reopens but I expect they might be going for someone a little younger" she says.

Sadly Carnforth's real tearoom never featured in the film. Director Lean considered it too far from the station platform for filming purposes and for the external shots, a mock-up was built near the station subway.

The romantic scenes inside the refreshment room were filmed on a studio set in Denham -- back in London's Home Counties -- after all.