You can set your watch by the kisses. The 11.31 Shrewsbury to Birmingham elicits a peck on the cheek; the 12.07 to Marylebone sees a snog and a cuddle; and the 12.15 to Milford Haven via Church Stretton is the cause of a romantic clinch, a flood of tears and a full-on on snogging session.

It’s an ordinary morning, but romance is evidently alive and going full steam ahead at Shrewsbury train station.

Train stations were built for kissing, and with thousands of goodbyes and hellos bid by people making connections every day, Shrewsbury railway station must rank as among the most romantic locations in Shropshire, its Brief Encounter-esque clock tower having seen more lip service in one single spot than any other in the county.

As trains come and go, a morning spent on the platform looks more like a slow-motion cuddling competition than a lot of people in a rush.

Departures are sudden. Kisses are inevitable. As the 13.07 London train pulls in, couples waiting to make a connection shuffle from foot to foot in anticipation. These are our lingering goodbyes and our heart-skipping hellos, but is this the end for brief encounters at train stations?

A station in Warrington this week slapped a ban on kissing, saying all the smooching is causing congestion. Bosses have erected ‘no kissing’ signs and told lovers they must confine their snogs to the short-stay car park outside.

So much for impulse and passion. The ban surely means an end to platform scenes like the one between Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in the 1945 film Brief Encounter, in which the couple famously share a passionate embrace at a station.

Thankfully, as Shrewsbury romantic Matt Powell bids farewell to his girlfriend Clare Bradley, there is no such ban at Shrewsbury station.

Clare, also from Shrewsbury, is a year-two music and communication student at York University and she and Matt are regularly apart. To them, the station represents the place where the couple are united and separated in equal measure. The place bound to have emotional and romantic significance.

Says Matt: “It’s a farewell thing and it’s where you meet people, especially if you have not seen people for a long time. Clare goes to university at York so when she comes back I meet here here. I always wait on the platform and look down the carriage windows when the train comes in, to see if I can see her.

“And when you see the person you are waiting for, your heart always ‘goes’.”

Clare adds: “I came down every couple of weeks and it is a romantic place to meet.”

And with that they are gone, rushing to the train to bid farewell until next time they meet at the same spot.

Further down the platform there’s more evidence of an encounter, only this time not such a brief one, as Karl Murray and his girlfriend Emily Carson share a cuddle before taking themselves and their love off on the 11.30 to Wolverhampton.

Romantically, the 17-year-olds even share the soundtrack to their love – one earphone each of their MP3 player.

Karl hails from Cumbria and regularly makes the 200-mile round trip by train to meet his Shrewsbury belle.

“Train stations are romantic places when you are leaving each other and meeting each other,” says Karl.

“It’s so sad when you depart and happy when you meet. Every couple of weeks we meet here.”

Tales of the heart continue at Shrewsbury train station, as they have since the day it was built in 1848.

Rail enthusiast and retired train worker Johnny Morris, from Shrewsbury, worked at the county station and over the years has seen romance at close quarters.

“I’ve written poems about the subject – it’s a very romantic place,” he says. “I’ve written one about Shrewsbury station and about people during the war parting and not knowing if they were coming back, and others coming home. If you worked on stations you saw it all. I’ve seen many romantic encounters. The station is the place, it’s very sad and very joyous.”

And cabbie Dean Dawson, who operates his taxi service from the pick-up area on the forecourt of the station, has seen it all in his 20 years: snogs under the station clock, kisses stolen in the dash to make a connection.

Encouragingly, it appears to him that young lovers are more demonstrative in their romantic gestures than their elders, with Dean adding: “In people past their 20s it’s very, very rare.”

Then again, most embraces are reserved for the moment the train comes into view on the platform. And from the car park you can’t see the 11.30 to Chester.

The sight of the train would seem to be a moment of unabashed truth for lovers who suddenly find themselves puckering up and entangled in their own private version of Brief Encounter.

One UK railway station may have gone cold on romance, but fortunately stations such as Shrewsbury firmly remain Shropshire’s designated kissing zones.

By Ben Bentley