Did I
Hear Music at the Main Street Train Station?
The answer is YES! During our last trip to the Disneyland
Resort my husband wanted to do a second Tinder Ride. This time he wanted the C.
K. Holiday (his favorite Disneyland Train) instead of the E. P. Ripley. As I
stated before in my post about that Tinder Ride there are interesting things to
see in the Main Street Station. We never mind taking the time to look around.
I know I mentioned the Nelson-Wiggen Mechanical Music Box. It
is behind a red velvet rope but not to keep you from playing it. It sits next
to the door the DLRR Train Conductors use to get on and off the loading platform.
This fantastic machine still works! For the cost of .10¢ you can listen to a song played
on this multi instrument machine! It is amazing because this machine is an
original and not a reproduction. It is between 80 to 90 years old! It was
manufactured sometime between 1922 and 1929.
The Nelson-Wiggen Piano Company, of Chicago, Illinois,
incorporated and operated by two very talented former Seeburg employees, was a
relative latecomer to the mechanical music era, being incorporated in 1922.
Consequently, the company's total production was mainly confined to only about
seven years, a short period of time compared to other contemporary
manufacturers of coin-operated pianos and orchestrions. Nonetheless,
Nelson-Wiggen managed to produce a high-quality line of small keyboard and
cabinet style coin-operated pianos and orchestrions. Unfortunately, because of
its late start into the field of automatic music, a relatively small number of
Nelson-Wiggen instruments survive today.
I do not know the history of this actual machine and hope to
find out more about it on future trips to Disneyland. I am going to attempt to
find a serial number on the machine as I did not see it noted on the website
that maintains a registry of these grand old players. I hope to be able to get
it added to the registry so people will know it is there and still working
well.
Here is video I shot of the Nelson-Wiggen playing.
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