Stuart Maconie, also a popular radio broadcaster, waxes lyrical about the railway station in his new book, Adventures on the High Teas.

In a chapter entitled, Brief Encounters, Missed Connections, Maconie describes his love for the classic film and his visit to the station where its most memorable scenes were filmed.

He writes: "I'm sitting at the very table where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard said their botched, agonising goodbye. I feel I ought to be doing something more reverent than eating a toasted teacake and jotting down notes about my surroundings but, hey, I like toasted teacakes."

He goes on to namecheck Peter Yates, the chairman of Carnforth Station Trust; and extol the virtues of the refreshment rooms, quotes out of the visitors' book, ambles round the visitor centre and observes an argument on the platform.

Maconie's book is a study of Middle England which has among its treasured features the volunteer enthusiast of which he finds much evidence in Carnforth.

He writes: "Let's hear it for the British enthusiast, several of whom – grey-haired men in comfy sweaters all – made my day at Carnforth a lot more pleasant."