When service was something ..........

[scrubba]

I built this diorama going on four years ago now . I showed it twice , never got a lot of response over it and now , I'm not sure as to what I'll do with it . It was a re creation of an actual station here in Richmond Virginia , specifically, Highland Springs out on the East side . It was built in 1957. Not the model, the actual station .

Crown Central Petroleum was now owned by the very same family who founded Lord Baltimore Filling stations in Washington D C and in Maryland . You probably know this company better as Amoco. Without going into a long history, I can if you like , I'll just post pictures and allow you , the folks here to see what a typical service station in 1965 would have looked like , complete with some .34c gasoline and of course trading stamps .

[PlasticDreams]

That is very nice! My dad worked for Atlantic Richfield and Standard Oil, we filled up at many of these old stations..."fill er up with Ethyl". They checked your tires and your oil. Heck, they would even fix a flat on a bicycle tire!

[scrubba]

I worked in an Atlantic station myself , last year of High School. Atlantic, Richfield of New York , Richfield California and Sinclair merged into what we know of today as ARCO. That was in 1969. That created a mess in the U S Court system that went on I guess until 1970-1. American Petofinia got all the Sinclair stations SOUTH of North Carolina . B P had recently bought a minority holding within Sohio Oil . Suddenly , former Virginia Sinclair dealers were having to re brand as B P dealers and speak British English. There's a lot more to the story. I can run it past ya , but it's boring unless you really want to know the "Muddy " stories of former oil giants .............

[PlasticDreams]

My dad worked for the commercial credit centers and went through the Atlantic Richfield/Sinclair deal, as a kid we couldnt get enough of the Dino toys....he also went through the breakup of Standard Oil and was assigned to the business unit of Amoco. Funny how the government broke that up, if my dad were alive he would be amazed at now how we allow mergers such as US Air and AA in that industry to become what they broke up in the past.