The Living Tradition - A brief history of the Melbourne Town Hall organs and organists from 1869 to 1995 by Thomas Heywood -- continued -- page 7.

After great consideration the contract for the complete reconstruction of the organ was placed with the English organ building firm of Ingram & Company, Hereford. The work included a new electro-pneumatic action and a revised tonal scheme re-using a large amount of the existing pipework.

The famous blind concert organist Alfred Hollins visited Melbourne in 1904, having travelled to Australia on board the Ortona. Although pure coincidence the Scottish organ builder Eustace Ingram, who was travelling to Melbourne to negotiate the rebuilding of the Town Hall organ, was also on board the Ortona. Ingram later wrote a letter to Musical Opinion in which stated that he had shown Hollins the Hill organ in the Town Hall in 1904 and "after running his fingers over the drawstop knobs, he [Hollins] remarked that the ivory labels were in different colours ­ red for the reeds and blue for the couplers."

During Eustace Ingram's stay in Melbourne in August 1904 he arranged for Fincham & Son, who had been maintaining the Town Hall organ, to clean and remove the pipework, dismantle and remove the old action, clean the organ, and leave everything ready for Ingram & Company to install the new action and pipework.

The representatives of Ingram & Company, John Stanley and Walter Portlock, arrived in Melbourne on 28 April 1905 and the rebuilding work continued until the end of June 1906. Although the work had been contracted to an English company, the Melbourne firm of Fincham & Son played a major role throughout the rebuilding of the organ including the supply of nine men from their staff and the construction of the bottom octave of an additional 32' open wood rank from two-inch thick redwood. The work that had been undertaken in England was supervised by Thomas H. Collinson, Organist of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh who was acting on behalf of the Melbourne City Council.

As part of the extensive work undertaken the old Hill organ console was removed and a new five-manual console was placed about 20 feet from the organ case at the front of the instrument, and about 15 feet below the level of the organ floor; the console was connected to the organ by a cable containing over 1,000 fine electric wires.

The new organ console, the most up-to-date in the southern hemisphere, incorporated several exciting new features including 112 stop keys replacing the usual drawstops, 13 electro-pneumatic combination key-touches placed between the keyboards to aid with registration control and 9 electro-pneumatic combination pedals placed above the pedal board. These key-touches and combination pedals were all instantly adjustable through the means of stop switches by which the performer could prepare stop combinations before a concert, and a secondary switch for operating a complete set of "Ad Libitum" stop-keys consisted of a duplicate stop-key for every one existing in the organ. There were also four balanced swell pedals operating the shutters on the Swell, Choir and Solo organs and also the Carillon which was housed in a separate swell box, not to mention the crescendo and sforzando pedals. Many other new features were also incorporated including double-touch to the key action.

A visual highlight of the new console was the lavishly carved music desk incorporating the Coat of Arms of the City of Melbourne with its Latin text 'Vires acquirit eundo' meaning 'We gather strength as we grow.' This text was exceedingly appropriate, as the size of the Town Hall organ had now grown considerably from 66 speaking stops to 82 speaking stops and over 4,700 pipes!

Other aspects of the complete reconstruction of the organ included much-needed repairs to the soundboards and wind trunks. The contract price was £4,500 to which was added an extra amount of £1,244 16s 10d for the new 32' Pedal Diaphone; the total cost of the rebuild was £5,744 16s 10d.

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