As a footnote to Julian Dyer's interesting post about the Salomons
Welte organ near Tunbridge Wells (UK), I recently visited the Technik
Museum in Speyer, near Heidelberg, Ger.  The museum is mainly dedicated
to cars, trains, and aircraft; but they have a large mechanical music
section also, where you can listen to quite a number of instruments
which are extremely well restored.

In the main hall there is a Welte Philharmonic organ, which sits on a
large stage.  The organ is split up into its component parts, with a
coin-in-slot device at the bottom.  For a Euro visitors can listen to a
roll.  I am no expert on organs, but I think this is the same model as
the one in Tunbridge Wells.  It was certainly claimed to be the biggest.

It sounded quite wonderful.  I could not really tell whether this was
roll- or hand-playing.  The emphasis in the BBC broadcast seemed to be
focused on the orchestrion part of the player, with its percussive
effects rather than on the Philharmonic rolls which were obviously much
more musical.  Nigel Ogden, the presenter, played a couple of pieces by
hand as well.  I thought the hand-played rolls sounded at least as good
as the presenter's playing, good though he is.  Perhaps that's why they
were not featured quite so much ... ho ho.

The museum's website: http://www.technik-museum.de

Tony Dellaway