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I have always had a love and great interest in carousels since I was a little girl.
In the 1980’s, I decided to build a miniature carousel of my own. After about 5 yrs of research and many months of searching for parts, I found Sy Gagne who sold some miniature carousel parts. I purchased what I could from him and proceeded to build my carousel.
Not being able to find what I needed to continue I then started making my own parts and also made parts for Sy Gagne.
I was a model maker at G.M. and had a complete machine shop at home. I completed my first carousel in 1992. I still continued to make parts for Sy until he passed away in the mid nineties.
This is that first carousel. I wanted it to be a model of a 1920’s Dentzel machine. I did this one from pictures in the Painted Ponies book. This carousel is a 12 sweep, 44” diameter.
In about 1995 my miniature carousel group had a show at Dollywood. At that time I first saw the real carousel that I was trying to copy and saw the things that I wanted to change. The changes were so great that I decided to build a whole new carousel which is my second carousel and the one pictured here. This carousel is the same size as the first.
After many years of hauling my carousel to many shows, I decided to build
a smaller carousel that was easier to transport and so I built this 28” dia.
Carousel with 8 sweeps. This is the carousel that I have designed for my
kits. It is also available in a 22” two row version.
Because we live in the city that is the Home of the Carousel and
was one of the main manufacturers of band organs, along with
the fact that Bernice was really involved in miniature carousels, Ed decided to experiment with building a miniature band organ. After about 2 months of research, Ed built his first band organ in 2001. He has built more than 30 Band Organs to date and plan to expand to a few more different styles.
The original buildings that housed the manufacture of these organs still stand today and are over 100 yrs. old.
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121 Payne Ave. N, Tonawanda, NY 14120