Woodrails currently in the game rooms:

(from right) '50 Gottlieb Bowlette, '51 Williams Hayburners, '53 Williams Silver Skates, '54 Williams Screamo (project)
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Three Genco games - '48 Floating Power, '50 South Pacific, '48 Screwball
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Three Gottlieb games - '59 Queen Of Diamonds, '53 Poker Face, '52 Happy Days
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'60 Gottlieb Kewpie Doll, '57 Williams Jig Saw, '59 Williams Rocket
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A couple more Williams from '59 - Golden Bells and Spot Pool

Bowlette, Kewpie Doll, Jig Saw and Rocket are on loan from a friend, and South Pacific and Screwball are co-owned.

In addition, there's a '50 Williams Rag Mop currently in work, and a couple of '50 Williams Nifty's in the queue.

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One day I'll get back to it. The cabinet is beautiful. Repro backglass. But playfield needs a lot of touchup, and even worse is the damage from a leaking bottle of cleaner at the top.

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My favorite restoration, from a couple of years back - a '52 Gottlieb Happy Days, a real favorite when I was a kid. It apparently sat for years derelict in a shed in Mississippi with a bunch of other woodrails when the Coinopwarehouse folks found it. shed 04-11 (resized).jpg

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No playfield glass, so the playfield was a total mess - scratched, filthy and worn, the rubbers all melted onto the surface, and the plastics completely toasted. Luckily the unique playfield inserts and most of the bumper caps were still there.

Relays and other parts had been cannibalized, some coils were fried, plus a hard-to-find mis-wire that took a friend & I many hours to sort out.

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Playfield cleaning underway.
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As would have been expected, the backglass was in bad shape as well.

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On the other hand, the cabinet was in excellent condition.
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After lots of touchups to the playfield and new plastics. And a new backglass from Shay Arcade Group. Turned out pretty good.
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From what I recall, Coinopwarehouse had around 30-40 woodrails and a couple of bingos & other arcade games from that shed on the floor at their old place in Gaithersburg. The games were in pretty bad shape overall but there were some nice ones. At the time, I was really only interested in the Happy Days. Wish I had a do-over for that...

What happened to the rest, I don't know.

Here's a couple more pics of the shed contents:
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This pic is on their loading dock when they were unloading. The Happy Days is on the left, beside the Jalopy.
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Yeah, rubber had gone pretty much solid. And glued to the playfield. I tried a lot of things, but best result was with iso alcohol, which loosened some of it. But most of it had to be chipped away and that took the ink with it. It was a mess.

I tried heating it but not much success. Next time I might try cooling it with electronics duster can, maybe that will shrink it a bit. Otherwise it will be iso + exacto again.

Latest restoration - 1950 Williams Nifty. I ended up with two of these games so combined best of both into one game. Both cabinets in good shape; one backglass excellent, the other (on the right) maybe even better -- except that someone pulled the glass from the backbox with the backglass lockbar in place, which resulted in a large scratch down the center. The other glass also had a few scrapes and flakes.
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Repair touchups on both glasses went well, except my touchup yellow for the scratch went slightly darker than original when it dried. Left - scratched glass, right - the other glass. I went with the unscratched glass for the keeper.
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Both playfields cleaned up well, but someone had removed the metal rails for the 5-6 lanes from the one on the left (why?). I went with the one on the right for the keeper.
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The plastics had a lot of scratches around the post holes but repair touchups worked well. Left - before repair, right - after.
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Nice cabinet, just needed cleaning...
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Restoration and all functional repairs finished, and in its spot in the small game room... A nice-playing game.
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The other Nifty has been sold. It's definitely restorable. I think the worst problem will be finding those metal lane guides that someone removed for whatever reason.

All the bumper skirts are original to the game.

1954 Williams Screamo restoration - Over the past six years I ended up with three of these.

One was pretty much a wreck; playfield in poor condition, busted cabinet, and totally re-wired top to bottom in grey, white and yellow wiring (?).

Between the other two: one nice cabinet and one OK cabinet, one nice and one OK playfield, one OK and one very nice set of plastics, but all three backglasses had a lot of flaking. So I did a repro of backglass, multi-layer direct print to plexiglass, and put the best of the two decent games together.

I saw that the flyer for the game showed that the one pop and six passive bumpers spelled out Screamo, which is also shown on the schematic. But it looks like the game was issued with blank caps for whatever reason (time, cost?). So I made decals of the lettering for the caps.

A really nice-playing game. A great addition to the woodrail room.

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Re-rubbering the sides gets easier after a few times. Just did this Genco Trade Winds a couple of weeks back. I position the rubber by the side wall and press the small nail thru the rubber with my fingers, then nail it in.

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1956 Williams Tim-Buc-Tu restoration. My first woodrail with the picnic-style legs. The cabinet is in pretty good condition except for the front. The playfield is really nice. My repro plastics and backglass, all on plexiglass. A fast-playing game with a middle pop bumper and strong kickers that are more integral to gameplay than the two flippers located on the edges of the playfield.

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They are glued in layers, so if the glue doesn't hold, pieces will fall away.

I posted about this Genco Three Feathers game in the Genco club pages, but am re-posting this request for help here.

As you can see from this pic, the backglass on mine is pretty poor with a lot of flaking.

I'll be doing a repro of it, but the issue is that I'm missing all the detail in the red feather (behind the blonde). If anyone has a nicer backglass & could get me a few high res pics of that area, it would be a big help and greatly appreciated.

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Thanks, much appreciated.

Yes, thanks, I've seen those. Good as guides but not enough resolution to get the details right.

To follow up, I got a decent scan of the Genco Three Feathers to work from, so here's the completed art. The grey shows the areas where the glass will be silvered.

Now I'm looking for some help in restoring the art for a '51 Williams Shoot The Moon. This glass has been chipped and shattered by kids who used it for target practice with a bb gun as well as throwing at it with the steel balls. I need a couple of good hi-res pics of the girls on the left and the lower right corner. The pics available on line at IPDB and other sites don't have the needed resolution. Anybody with this game that can help out? It'll be much appreciated.

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They did their worst in any event. Hopefully someone has this game & will snap some pics of the missing areas for me. The glass is so nice, it deserves to be restored.

Any help greatly appreciated. Doing this one for a friend. His game is very nice & original other than the glass.

PM sent - thanks.

The current woodrail collection. I sold off some last Fall, so I have a couple of open spots.
One space will be for the Genco Trade Winds that's now in the shop, but it has been badly hacked and it'll be a while before it can join the herd.

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Fun-Fair looks nice, but it's a totally rusted out wreck inside. Hoping to find another one sometime that I can use to put together a working one.

It is a repaint, but to the original cabinet color scheme. I bought it so long ago that it was a long time before I discovered that there was a rare version and this was it. I believe the white cabinet is original for the greater majority of the ones produced, the reverse wedgeheads. Yes, the playfield is a a deeper shade of blue. Playfield has been touched up, was very planked.

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I am looking for a Genco Trade Winds if anyone has one. The one I have is badly hacked.

LED kits from Ikea before they got expensive, and now LED strips around the inside of the metal frames.

Inks fade in different ways. Generally due to UV exposure over time.
Red can go orange, or fade out to tan.
Orange can go yellow (as yours has), or fade out to tan.
Blue and blue green can go green.
Purple can go more blue.

Schematics for United games are really hard to find. But yeah, PBR is the place to check.

I picked up two of these 1951 Chicago Coin 'Play Ball' woodrails. Actually, almost two - one is missing some stuff, including the backbox (which is a light box only and not required for playing), the printed playfield glass, lockdown bar and some other parts. It's not quite a pinball game - no flippers, no bumpers, no targets. It's not a pitch 'n' bat either. Basically it's a bagatelle, more or less a supersized copy of the 1934 Rock-ola World Series. You aim for the 'Hit' lane, and if you get it the game randomly assigns a single, double, triple or home run. The ball then enters the green platter, which rotates accordingly with each following hit. The game mechanically counts balls and strikes - the fourth 'ball' is shunted to the 'Hit' lane, and the third strike is shunted to the 'Out' lane. Three outs ends the game. You can win replays with enough runs scored.

Both playfields cleaned up very nice, as did the cabinets. The backglass in the light box had a lot of cracking in the ink as well as a lot of fading in the orange, so I did a repro of it.

The playfield on the left has a number of details different from the other one, and I'm wondering if it could be a sample game. There are what apparently were translucent plastic strips (they are opaque now) along either side of the necked area that look as if they were intended to diffuse the light. They're not on the other game. Likewise, on that same playfield there are drill holes around that look like they were meant for the installation of bayonet lamps, but there is no wiring for them. Instead, both games are equipped for standard size 7.5W bulbs. And the printed lettering around the green platter is different on the two playfields (see '1st Base').

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On this ChiCoin 'Play Ball', the playfield on the right is missing one of the stepper units and I'm hoping someone has one on or from a ChiCoin parts game from the early 50s that they'd be willing to sell. I think the stepper is common to ChiCoin games of that period, and has coils 9122 and 9126 on it. Thanks in advance for any help.

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Updating the status of the two 1951 Chicago Coin 'Play Ball' games I picked up a few weeks ago.

The one on the right is up and running. Someone found the stepper I needed for it and even fabricated the wiper. I've still got one issue to chase down, but it's almost there.
The backbox glass and playfield glass are my repros, on plexiglass.

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Going over a '52 Gottlieb Hit 'N' Run for a friend. Pretty filthy.
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Cabinet cleaned up nice with xxxx steel wool and Greased Lightning cleaner, followed by Howard's Feed N Wax. 20201114_153548 (resized).jpg20201114_153736 (resized).jpg
The playfield was also really dirty, with some lost veneer, sunken rollovers, chipped bumper skirts, and missing plastics. 20201114_143553 (resized).jpg
Playfield also cleaned up well, used Novus 2. 20201115_150718 (resized).jpg
The unique '1 Base When Lit' bumper caps were goners. So new caps with decals printed on clear printable vinyl film w/adhesive backing. Bumpers repaired, rollovers leveled. (Plastics on order.) 20201204_125233-1 (resized).jpg20201204_130424 (resized).jpg20201205_120523 (resized).jpg

You get some slight wrinkling, but the glossy sheen of the decal and the cap tend to hide it. Burnishing any creases helps too, as does an extra cut in a void area to relieve stress from mounting on a curved surface. So viewing from the normal distance it's pretty hard to tell that it's a decal.

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They look a bit better in person than in the pic, but they'll do.

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Thanks. But I think I see why there weren't too many caps done with small print in white. The game is not quite up & running yet, a number of issues.

I've repro'd these apron cards. Message me if interested.43r 1952-55 Williams apron cart print (resized).jpg42r Genco Apron Card print (resized).jpg

I have a collection of Genco games. But there aren't very many collectors for them. In that condition - bad glass, nice playfield (usually that orange fades badly, but yours looks good from the pic), playfield lamp posts are all there, wrong flippers, not working - probably a couple hundred.