June 7, 2024, North Tonawanda, NY


Thursday, we woke to rain, and it was forecast to rain all day, so we decided to do something indoors.  We went to the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda, NY.

The carrousel factory opened in 1872 and first produced steam engines, boilers and gears.  According to legend, it is Alan Herschell’s trip to New York City where he saw a carrousel for the first time that inspired the company to join the amusement industry.


There was also a Wurlitzer factory in North Towanda and when it closed the museum acquired all the original music rolls which were stored in this room. We can’t see all the rolls in this picture but there were thousands stored on shelves all around the room. The machine in the front is used to make copies of the music rolls.




The museum is restoring this band organ.  This type of organ was used on the carrousels.








The Master Carvers shop was set up as it looked 1919.  Apprentice carvers cut out the rough outlines of the animals and carved the legs.  More experienced journeymen craved the bodies.




Master Carvers were responsible for carving the heads and completing the fine details once all parts were assembled.  We were amazed at the intricate detail on this horse.





Other displays talked about the painting – three to five coats of a white primer paint, then the colors, followed by five coats of varnish.  The Roundhouse is where the carousels were assembled and tested before being disassembled and shipped out.  Today, there is a “1916 Allan Herschell Number 1 Special Carrousel” in the Roundhouse.  It has 36 jumping horses, 1 stationary chariot, 1 spinning chariot, 588 light bulbs and weighs slightly more than 8 tons.  In 1916 you could have purchased this carrousel for $5,000 plus shipping.  Nancy couldn’t resist a chance to ride.



We enjoyed the museum and seeing how carrousels were made.  A great way to spend a rainy day and on the way back to the campground, we saw this abandoned revolving railroad bridge.  We then stopped at Platter’s Chocolate Factory and bought some delicious chocolate and pecan brittle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

June 4-6, 2009

Image
June 4, 2009 We drove Northwest of Jasper along the Yellowhead Highway to Mount Robson Provincial Park. We saw a moose along the river in the distance but wasn’t close enough to get a picture. We saw Yellowhead Lake and Moose Lake, and had a picnic lunch at the Mt. Robson Visitors Center. The scenery is spectacular – a picture of Mt. Robson. Our site at Whistler campground. June 5 We left Jasper in the sunshine and warm but the further North we got, the colder, rainier and more grey it got. As we turned north on route 40 to Grand Paririe, we started to hit a little snow. Didn’t last long but really woke us up. It stayed rainy and grey until we got to Grand Cache then it started to clear. We also got our first real windshield chip today, but a trip to WalMart and a windshield repair kit later we were fixed. The land here is somewhat hilly, swampy and covered with trees. There are some really big oil and gas complexes and some large lumber mills such as the one we saw in Grand Paririe.
Read more

August 24-26, 2009

Image
We headed towards Flathead Lake Monday morning and stopped in Kalispell to get our air conditioner repaired. It had stopped working a couple of weeks ago and August is not the time to be without an air conditioner. The RV dealer we stopped at gave us the name of the guy who does their air conditioning work. He was able to fix the air conditioner (a switch had burned out) in a couple of hours and we were on our way. We drove to Polson, MT at the south end of Flathead Lake and are going to stay here for a few days. We are staying at Eagle Nest RV, which has a cherry orchard on one side, a golf course on one side and a horse pasture on another side. It is a really nice park with lots of grass and trees. Unfortunately, we are at the end of the cherry season and we might not be able to find any fresh cherries. Tuesday morning we decided to take a drive around Flathead Lake. This is a very scenic area with lots of fruit orchards. We found a fruit stand and bought cherries, peaches, tomatoes
Read more

July 28, 2009

Image
We left Valdez this morning in rain and fog and retraced our route back up the Richardson Highway. We ran out of the fog and rain after we went over Thompson Pass and thought we would be able to see more of the scenery. Not to be, shortly we ran into more smoke. We stopped at the visitor center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park but it was really smoky so we didn’t stay very long. The ranger there (we think he was a ranger but he looked about 15 years old!) told us that there are currently 60 fires in Alaska and the smoke here is from the fires North of here around Fairbanks. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the largest national park in the US at 13.2 million acres. There are only 2 short gravel roads in the park so access is limited to backpacking, hiking and flight seeing. The park is mainly wilderness and has 4 major mountain ranges in it and includes 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the US. Unfortunately, because of the smoke we were not able to see any of them. We turned off the R
Read more