ST. THOMAS – The City of St. Thomas revealed its latest public artwork on Thursday, adding a burst of color to the growing Yarmouth Yards industrial park.
Rising over seven meters high, Imagination Station features a wooden toy train designed in a circular shape at the corner of Dennis Road and Highbury Avenue South. This marks the first permanent public artwork created by Woodstock-born artist Briony Douglas.
“A lot of my artwork is made with the intention to make people happy, also dipping into nostalgic feelings,” Douglas said. “For this, I knew the city was train-centric and decided that it would be cool to bring back an item that was important to me as a child. The circle itself is supposed to represent the past and the future connecting in a cyclical kind of motion.”
The sculpture is situated at what St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston referred to as the gateway to Yarmouth Yards, a 1,500-acre industrial park where facilities for electric vehicle battery maker Power Co and synthetic graphite producer Vianode are currently being built.
“We’ve got millions of dollars for the factories being built over here and thousands of jobs being created, but we wanted to also make it the entrance to the community. This is the industrial entrance into our community and where all the great big financial things happen in St. Thomas,” Preston said.
Imagination Station stands at Yarmouth Yards Industrial Park in St. Thomas on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (Geoff Robins/The )
Douglas didn’t decide where Imagination Station would go but was thrilled to see it placed at Yarmouth Yards’ entrance.
“Coming from a family household that had a father that worked in a factory, and when that factory shut down, I knew how devastating it was for us,” Douglas said.
“The fact this new space is going to bring so many jobs for people in the community is really important to me and to my history and to what affected my family hugely as well.”
Preston mentioned that the city aimed to “regather its industrial growth” by developing land now used for Yarmouth Yards.
He referenced an old saying: “If you build it, they will come,” asserting that Yarmouth Yards has “done that in spades.”
“It’s more regional than it is just St. Thomas because anything done here helps London and the whole region. We’re just saying, ‘way to go, guys, come look,’ and now we’ve got a great big sign saying the same thing,” Preston said.
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