Touch of past returning to old Memorial Hall Carousel made its way around before coming back.

In the Carousel Pavilion at Fairmount Park's Memorial Hall yesterday, a pair of pink pigs scampered after two horned goats, while a chestnut horse lay on its side, awaiting placement. After half a century on the road, and almost two years of restoration, they're back where they belong.

This week craftsmen from the Marion, Ohio, firm of Carousels & Carvings Inc., led by Todd Goings, began installing animals on a historic carousel in what soon will be the new home of the Please Touch Museum. So far, the carousel is an impressive work in progress: A few vaulted ceiling panels are already in place, covering the recently hung floor and first batch of 14 meticulously carved and painted animals, which Goings expects to finish putting in place today. By the time Please Touch opens in mid-October, 52 will be on board, along with two chariots, new paneling, and 1,296 miniature lightbulbs.

The carousel seems particularly appropriate in historic Memorial Hall, for it is more than just a children's ride arriving in Philadelphia - it's a piece of the city's past. Built by the Dentzel Carousel Company on Germantown Avenue in 1924, a few years before the company closed, it ran for decades at Woodside Park in West Philadelphia, not far from where it stands today. It was beloved by locals, many of whom still remember their favorite animals.

When Woodside Park closed in 1955, the carousel left the Philadelphia area for New York's Rockaway Beach until around 1959, when it was purchased by carousel enthusiast Frederick Fried. He featured it at the Music Circus in Lambertville, N.J., before selling it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1965.

The Smithsonian put it into storage in an old textile mill in Massachusetts, where it remained, dismantled and mostly forgotten, for the next 40 years.

And it might still be there, if not for Please Touch. With its focus on children, the museum had long desired a carousel, and when the decision was made to move from its current Center City location to vast Memorial Hall, the timing was right. The plan was to build one, until the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission - to which the Smithsonian had donated the carousel in 2002 - offered the Dentzel as a long-term loan. Museum officials accepted and in 2006 prepared to move the carousel out of storage and back into the public eye.