By Laurence Grant - Canada Southern Station Historian

One of the interior decorative features of the Canada Southern station, viewable upon its completion in 1873, was the series of cast iron support columns in the dining room and waiting rooms. Topping the columns and in the classical style are capitals consisting of lead acanthus leaves, wooden brackets, cast and wood jack-in-the-pulpit flowers, and cast iron goddess heads. Over the years some elements of the capitals of these columns have been removed. About 10 goddess heads have been lost.

Personally and over several trips to Scotland, I’ve collected reproductions of decorative elements of British Gothic cathedrals. There seemed to be an opportunity here, in addition to the potential for replacing the missing heads, to reproduce an interesting piece of railway and St. Thomas history. Such had been done, for example, with the restoration of the Capitol Theatre in Windsor, where decorative plaster architectural elements were reproduced for sale as part of the fund development for the theatre.