Gordon,  I knew Lloyd Burr and once fired the boiler for him in
a St. Patrick's Day parade in San Francisco.  They put us right
behind the Spanish riding group, and when the calliope cut loose
there were panicked horses all over Market Street.  Several riders
were bucked off their horses, which were then running all over
the place.

The measured sound intensity from the sidewalk next to the parked
calliope was 147 decibels.  This baby was _loud_ -- a good three-mile
range.  Lloyd ran the calliope at much higher steam pressure than the
whistles were originally designed to use.  I had cotton stuffed in my
ears plus ear protectors and, even so, I was almost deaf after the
parade.

Lloyd got the last set of whistles made by [Thomas J.] Nichol, so he
told me.  He made his own electric solenoid valves and the keyboard
was on a long cable so the "artist" could sit on the folded top of
a convertible behind the big flatbed truck and play.

Mounted on a big flatbed truck with a large donkey boiler and a huge
water tank under the truck, the boiler burned some 250 gallons of
propane and used about 300 gallons of water for a one-hour parade.

When the MGM movie, "Showboat", opened at the Warfield Theater in San
Francisco, they hired the calliope to provide appropriate showboat
music.  Problem was that as soon as the thing started up every hotel on
Market Street was on the phone to the theater manager, and the police,
to stop the racket.  Seems the guests couldn't sleep with that going on.
Whatever -- a block away the sound was just fantastic and really grand.
What a sound!

The story was that after Burr died, and according to his will, the
truck and calliope were buried in some field in, I think, Fresno.
Anyhow, the whole affair just disappeared and was never heard from
again.  I always wondered if it was really buried, or if it managed to
survive.  If anyone really knows, it would be great to hear from them.

Jim Crank

 [ Other steam calliopes built by Thomas J. Nichol are mentioned at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Calliope/DQ.html  -- Robbie