County Fair

United 1951

November 2015

I bought County Fair over 30 years ago as part of a package of three games. It was added to the list and did not cost much to ship so I did not complain. Little did I know it was a rare game. It later helped me set a theme for my collecting, that of horse race games. It is my only horse race pinball and I added a Paces Race and an Evans Races in order to continue the theme.

Starting Restoration

I have not done a restoration in almost two years so it was fun to get started again. One of the problems I anticipated with an older game was the need of a schematic. As I restored other games, I was always asking about a schematic and was always disappointed. Happily as I removed the back, I found it stapled to the back of the board. It was very brown, very brittle, and something had been eating it on the bottom. I removed it, scanned it in, removed most of the brown, and created a readable schematic. Here is the schematic in pdf format.

There is also a cable routing image on the back part of the scenery for the horserace. Unfortunately it was glued and was very difficult to remove. In fact, I tore the #2 stepper image. So I removed the scenery and scaned it in, touched it up, and printed out a new copy. Here is the layout in image format.

The game has a full height backbox, with the back part acting as the rear legs. The horse steppers and cables in in the bottom while the logic and scoring relays are in the top part.

Notice the support rods and the two wood braces at the bottom. These all serve to keep the cables tight between the steppers and the horse carriages.

The game has no flippers! Even though it was built in 1951, I suspect it was originally designed as a gambling machine. I have no idea as to the method of play or even the number of balls. I suspect it has five as the out hole is larger. I have not read the instructions but will be reproducing them soon.