For years in the 1970s we had my 1920 Tangley C-43 out to literally
hundreds of parades and static events, mounted on a 1920 made but
1909 model Autocar truck.  We certainly never had any problem with
frozen tuning plugs, although the vibration of moving the truck
(either on its own steam or on a flat-bed trailer) caused the tuning
plugs to slip so we had to re-position them.

I suspect the idea of calliope pipes needing re-tuning would apply
more to the steam versions than the compressed-air ones.  The clouds
of steam heated up everything in close proximity including, of course,
the operators.  Why the steam folk didn't resort completely to
roll-operated units, I don't know; if they did, it was a small
percentage.  Why they didn't change the hot metal-wire connected hot
metal keys at the hot metal keyboard to non-conducting elements like
wood, I also can't figure.

The operator was usually the stationary engineer that kept the entire
mechanism in order.  I've often wondered whether when not playing at
being musicians, the same guy was in charge of the steam engines used
for many other purposes in the circus or carnival.  In any case, while
'performing', they wound up with red faces, burned hands, deafness,
etc.  Many resorted to playing with gloves or mittens to save their
fingers, thus contributing to the missed or incorrect notes, and they
probably wound up quite literally deafened by the high decibels of
sound, which they had to come to hate.  Sitting a few feet from whistles
that could be heard miles away could not have been very comfortable.

Most people are familiar with seeing a video or circus parade or
hearing a record of a steam calliope and recall "Entry of the
Gladiators" or some such traditional piece being played, nearly always
badly out of tune.  I met many folk in our touring that figured this
was just the nature of the instruments.  Musicians particularly would
come up and marvel that our Tangley was in tune.  After all, it's just
another form of pipe organ -- why shouldn't it be in tune?  We would
often offer pianists and organists an opportunity to play ours, which
they loved.

I explained to many people what to the steam operators was natural to
them and obvious: the pipes needed tuning so often and it was such an
annoying job that the not-particularly-musical operating engineers just
didn't care and so didn't bother.  After a while, the heat sufficed to
pretty much weld tuning plugs in place so that by then it was virtually
impossible to do anything about it anyway.  In any case, that was a
good excuse for them when it came up.

So I would say to our Tangley-owning friend or others familiar with
National or another air calliopes, rejoice in your choice!

I have one final comment, actually more of a question, which I hope
some old-timey calliopist can answer.  Initiates will know that
air-operated calliope owners correctly pronounce the name of the
instrument.  The following is paraphrased from Wikipedia:  Calliope
(also spelled Kaliope or Kalliope) means 'beautiful voiced' and is the
name of the muse of epic poetry.  It is also widely connected with
music.  In the late 19th Century and early 20th, a popular brand name
for certain disc music boxes was Kalliope, I believe made in Germany.
The proper pronunciation for all of these is: ka-LIE-oh-pee.

Air calliopists conform to this traditional usage.  Yet circus and
carnival folk -- replete with their own traditions -- pronounce it
CAL-ee-ope.  Does anyone know whence or why?

Best to all,
Lee Munsick