A train set fit for a really big doctor’s office
You don’t have to be sick to visit the new McMaster health sciences centre at Main and Bay.
There are people who step hesitantly through the front door, gaze at the grand lobby and wonder if it’s OK to come inside.
The answer is yes. All are welcome here.
That lobby, all wood and glass and light, is a lovely and tranquil place to watch downtown going past. There will always be room to sit here, a bank of 10 polishedwood stadium-style benches rising to the second floor.
Up there right now, you might still catch E. Robert Ross putting the finishing touches on a stunning 20-foot-long panorama of Hamilton, as seen from the High Level Bridge.
An anonymous donor commissioned the painting to honour Dr. John Kelton, former dean and vice-president of Mac’s Faculty of Health Sciences. He pushed hard to make this $85-million building happen, to have it be part of the comeback of the core.
Kelton had a special wish for this place. And thanks to an 83year-old ex-lawyer and creative genius named David Lee, it’s happening.
When Kelton was a boy in Windsor, some 60 years ago, his mother would say, “Let’s go see the trains.” That meant it was time to visit Dr. White.
Yes, the doctor had needles that hurt. But he also had trains that actually moved down the track, on a layout right there in the waiting room.
And that’s what Kelton wanted in this new building. It draws some 50,000 patients, including lots of kids. They should get to see some trains.
There was a large space in the new building — just off the lobby with picture windows looking out onto Main Street and City Hall — that was to become a public square, an indoor park.
The plan was some kind of garden. But Kelton convinced the university and architects that the garden would not be complete without a model train running through it.
While on conferences around the continent, he searched for railway ideas. But the answer was here at home.
Early in 2015, The Spectator reported on a layout David Lee had created in his Dundas basement over a period of 50 years.
Lee made mountains, trestles, a coaling station that by itself took 100 hours to build. He handpainted a thousand tiny figures for this 1950s world. A wedding in progress, a rooftop party, an Eaton’s truck making deliveries.
But Lee was struggling with Parkinson’s. He and wife Ruth would have to leave the house. The railway would be chopped up, cast off.
After the article appeared, Kelton made it to that basement in a flash. The 1/87th-scale railroad was surgically sliced, placed in 30 crates and transported to the justfinished building downtown.
Early this month, there was a small, soft opening of the space. David Lee is frail now, in a wheelchair. But this world is his making, and he got to see that it will live on.
“Our family never thought there would be such a day,” says Ruth.
There is still much to be done, maybe a year’s worth — scenery, lighting, track work and more. The job remains in the hands of a dozen burgundy-shirted men of the Dundas Modular Railway Club. Each Monday for two years now, they have reported for duty. The pay: coffee and doughnuts.
A major compromise has been necessary. Lee’s meandering basement layout — a new adventure around every bend — had to be straightened to fit the new home. All electronics have been replaced, and hundreds of tiny lights, too. The track stretches nearly the entire length of the room, about 100 feet.
Last week, glass crews started to enclose the railway, which will be vented separately. The rest of the room will be fresher, with waterfalls and a living wall of plants.
All in, it cost $750,000 to create this indoor park. That includes one forest, 28 steel-art trees trucked in from California. The big room opens Dec. 6. We are short on public spaces in the core. So this is a welcome oasis, made magic by David Lee’s miniature world.
Old trains in a new downtown. It’s perfect.