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LinksSelected links to other map or petrol and oil related pages |
| Oil Company Maps | | | Cartographic Links | | | Dealers in Road Maps | | | Petrol and oil links | | | Interactive petrol maps | | | Energy saving motoring |
These form just a small selection of the many map and petrol related pages that can be found on the web. Some have much more comprehensive lists of pages worth visiting than I could ever hope to include here.
The Road Map Collectors' Association (RMCA). The RMCA is the largest club for collectors of oil company and North American official issue road maps. The site provides a useful background for new collectors and links to a good number of related sites.
Pascal Pannetier's Old Road Maps. This is the only other European site that I know of with an extensive selection of European petrol maps, mainly from Esso and Shell, but with a reasonable number from other brands such as BP and Total. These pages are available in French and English.
Jon Roma's map pages. Jon has a large world-wide collection of maps, including many from Europe. Jon lives in Illinois, so has most maps from the USA, but there are plenty of others too here to look at.
Judy Aulik is also based in Illinois, but she has created a wonderfully off-beat site looking at how women have been portrayed on road maps since the 1930s on her Women on oil company roadmaps site. She also includes a page of useful tips on the preservation of maps and a suggested grading system.
North of the border, Neal Wilson has an excellent page of Ontario Road Maps.
Australian petrol maps. Robert J Stephens maintains a good page with a mix of Australian, US and other maps issued by petrol companies, together with a few related items, such as adverts.
Yale University Library has a page dedicated to the history of US oil company maps, drawing on examples in its own collection. Sadly, the images are stored on separate pages making it hard to relate them to the text and some of the image files are rather large so slow to download.
Joseph Lauher's US maps. Joseph Lauher's sites is one of the larger US ones, although it suffers from having all its images on a single web page. The Chevron maps are particularly interesting.
An even more comprehensive resource for US Chevron maps is on Lon Metzger's page.
Craig Solomonson has posted a superb showcase of oil company and official state maps from Minnesota, and Harold Cramer is seeking to include an image from a map of Pennsylvania for every year since 1681! Oil company maps of Pennsylvania are well represented on his site.
Several collectors have started sites relating to one or two brands:
Two smaller companies (Enarco and Long Oil Company) are also well covered, and Jim Williams has an excellent site with pages looking at two Canadian companies - Supertest and White Rose.
And finally, for a viewpoint of those working in the US map industry in the heyday of free maps, there is Don Shorock's Cartophile site, describing his experiences as a worker in the General Drafting Company's department fulfilling requests to the Esso Touring Service.
And, although there are no other sites dedicated to UK petrol company maps, there is a detailed description by Chris Mawson of the Shell County Guides issued between the 1930s and 1980s. This includes fascinating extracts from correspondence in the Shell archives that gives an insight into their support for the guides and road maps.
There are numerous specialist sites concerning cartography, often associated with university departments. Many of these in turn have an excellent selection of links to other sites, but two are worth singling out for mention:
Odden's bookmarks. Odden's booksmarks are maintained by the geography department at the University of Utrecht, Holland. There are over 10,000 links to other map-related Web pages but - to be quite honest - I have always found them rather difficult to use.
The Bodleian Library map room. As one of the UK copyright libraries, the Bodleian is entitled to a copy of every map published commercially in the UK. It claims to have the seventh largest collection of maps in the world and its website is well worth a visit.
As well as the RMCA, two other clubs for Map Collectors are worth mentioning: Another site devoted to more recent maps is Peter B. Lloyd's Underground Railway Maps site. Amongst the many web resources devoted to more antiquarian map collecting, three deserve to be singled out:
The Charles Close society. The Charles Close society is a specialist society for collectors of British Ordnance survey maps, but also has some members who collect more widely, including commercial European issues.
There is also a collector's society for Michelin maps, based in France. Olivier Wileczelek keeps another page about Michelin maps.
Although there are many dealers in old maps, most in Europe concentrate on either antiquarian maps or Ordnance Survey maps. As petrol maps are sometimes quite hard to find, I'm afraid that I'm not going to reveal my best sources! However the largest dealer in UK road maps is probably David Archer, although there are others who can be found at map and book fairs. Richard Dean specialises in large scale maps, especially of canals, but sometimes has OS and commercial maps. His web site can be found at Cartographics. And if you are looking for OS or Barts maps of Britain, Mapanorak carry a wide stock.
Probably the largest dealer in oil company maps is Noel Levy of Maryland, who maintains a fully searchable site called Twentieth Century Maps. But be warned that not all browsers can get past the first Flash graphics page (295K); in which case try this link straight through to his search page.
Several of the sites in the previous section also includes links to dealers in old maps.
New Maps
For new maps in the UK, I recommend Stanfords, Britain's largest map store, established in 1852.
There are numerous US-based on-line map stores, but maps.com has one of the larger stocks. It also sells antique maps, suitable for framing, and has on-line address finding and driving directions for the USA.
For a fairly comprehensive list of links to mainly US cartographers' (and travel publishers') websites, I recommend using the links from Eric Riback's Mapville site.
Comparisons (in German) of the main road maps on sale in Germany, today with ratings up to sehr gut, can be found on Michael Ritz's Landkartentest site. It includes links to the main German cartographers.
There are the fairly large number of pages on the Web created by people interested in collectibles from, and the history of, petrol and oil companies and, in particular, service stations, but mainly in the USA. Two British sites stand out: Alan Chandler's UK Petroliana site focuses on hardware, especially pumps, and has great photos - but you may need a broadband connection to get the best out of the site. And for people interested in signs and logos from petrol companies from the UK, Dan Lockton's Petrol Signs site must not be missed. A more artistic view of old, mainly disused UK filling stations can be seen in the black & white photographs taken in 2005-6 of Frank Eye's 444 Former Filling Stations (although most are not shown on line).
The most comprehensive of the US sites is "Primarily Petroliana", maintained by Jim Potts, which also includes detailed links to most other noteworthy US sites, which will not be repeated here. The inspiration for Dan Lockton's UK site was Gassigns.org where John Cirillo focuses on signs and service stations from the USA, but has some international ones too. And for a wider look at popular (or kitsch) US roadside architecture, including service stations, John Margolies is the acknowledged expert on everything that might be found beyond the signs saying GAS-FOOD-LODGING. His site has thumbnail images of some of the thousands of images in his archive, which are available for licensing in books, magazines and on websites.
The largest European site dedicated to service station memorabilia is that of the Museo Fisogni (in Italy). It's well worth checking out their site as in 2007/8 the museum is for sale and so may not be accessible much longer.
Peter and Susanne Bonito from Austria have a great site showing part of their gasoline and oil collection which is especially strong on Mobil and Shell items. In France, Jacques Roy shows an impressive collection, again mainly of pumps.
The Swedes have long had a fascination with large American autos, so it is not unsurprising to find a number of Swedish sites concentrating on service stations. Here are three:
In neighbouring Finland, Juha Tuulaniemi's Suomigasoa is an excellent site (in Finnish) with summary histories of all the main brands that have operated there, as well as a selection of photographs of old service stations and petroliana. However the entire site is written in Macromedia's Flash and can be very slow to load on computers using dial-up modems.
In spite of there being a fairly large number of German petroliana collectors, most of the information available on the web is still aimed more at general enthusiasts for "oldtimers", as classic cars are known. One exception is the engineering company of Feuchtemeyer, which has a website showing how it is developing a small private Tankstellenmuseum (Petrol station Museum).
Although there are plenty of petrol memorabilia collectors in Britain, none have yet created a definitive site. Perhaps surprisingly, there is a small group dedicated to Gulf Oil in the UK. If you are looking to purchase some old British pumps, signs or two-gallon cans, then you may like to visit the website of The Vintage Petrol Pump Company.
Further afield, Stuart Rooke keeps an interesting page about the history of Total in Australia.
The late Marcello Minale is widely regarded as the leading late twentieth century designer of service stations. His company, Minale Tattersfield, continue to work in the sector and maintains an interesting website on petrol station design.
Ir Grootveld is an architect specialising in designing service stations. He maintains an interesting site showing mainly Dutch Service Stations, with a mix of his own work (largely for Fina), older service stations often now demolished, and the best contemporary designs from other architects.
Most major oil companies in Europe and internationally now have their own websites so I shall not list any links to them here. As well as Jim Potts Primarily Petroliana site mentioned above, the UK's Energy Institute (formerly the Institute of Petroleum) maintains a good number of links to sites from European oil companies.
Away from the Web, there are a number of magazines with an interest in service station history and commercial road maps. Route Nostalgie is principally in French, and covers automobilia, roadside memories, petroliana and automobile art. It also keeps a special focus on road maps, from Michelin, oil companies and other commercial sources. The magazine is published quarterly in Paris and can be contacted either by e-mail or its website.
There are also two US based magazines for those interested in collecting artefacts from and the history of service stations. Only PCM maintains its own website, but you can contact both by e-mail. They are:
There is also a Canadian Service Station Memorabilia Association that publishes a quarterly newsletter titled Garage Door News.
Many companies have placed interactive maps onto the Web. However there are two sites that are of particular interest:
Catalist maintains a database of all 14,500 UK service stations and has plotted them on an interactive map produced by the AA. By selecting a town or village it is possible to see all the current filling stations by brand and ownership in that area. The map can be viewed at different levels of detail and can be panned to follow a route.
BP offers an interactive map and route finder marking BP stations along the way. Aimed primarily at BP Plus card holders it offers an extremely detailed set of route instructions, but is slightly let down by maps that are hard to zoom in on. (Shell's similar Geostar service has now been discontinued.)
Repsol-YPF, the largest Spanish petrol company, have created an interactive version of their Campsa Guide in English. Amongst other tourist information it locates all Repsol, Campsa and Petronor stations (but without showing which is which) and has a route finder. It can be very slow to use on a dial-up connection outside Spain, though.
Away from oil companies, the best site is arguably Michelin's. It too offers a pan-European route planner, with links to tourist sites and the hotels and restaurants listed in the famous Michelin Red Guide. Newly developed in 2001, this site even includes the ability for users to save searches on it to allow them to construct a personalised itinerary. Although the maps are fully zoomable down to street level, they at at their best when they are equivalent to the 1:200,000 series, faithfully reproducing Michelin's unique cartographic style.
My favourite interactive maps of the UK come from Multimap as they include street level maps at 1:10,000, the complete Ordnance Survey Landranger 1:50,000 maps (enlarged to 1:25,000 for clarity on a screen) and aerial views of main cities. All pages can be optimised for printing onto A4 paper, as well. Maps can be centred by address, postcode or National Grid Reference.
There are surprisingly few good web pages giving hints on how to use less petrol when driving, or when to consider alternative means of transport. The
UK Government has a rather short page as part of its section about owning a car on the Directgov web site, at a page location that keeps moving around and no longer appears to accept external links. Sadly, this appears to be due to a reduction in interest in the environmental effects of motoring, as evidenced by the ending of funding for the Green Motoring Forum. The Irish Energy Centre offer a slightly longer list of tips.
For a slightly more quirky checklist, try the list originally prepared by the Espoo Energy Agency in Finland. Or why not look at this site's 1959 Careful Driving tips, offered by Mobilgas in connection with its Economy Run, the 1979 Good Mileage Guide from Shell or the 1974 Exxon Tiger Tips!
For general information about energy saving in the UK, including an online calculator for your personal CO2 emissions, please check out the National Energy Foundation site. And I currently recommend the Energy Don's Blog.
I will always be pleased to hear of other sites you might think worthy of inclusion on this links page, as well as of any updated or broken links to the pages listed above. Please let me know with an e-mail!
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Text and layout © Ian Byrne, 2000-8 |
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