New and improved pages on the
European Petrol Road Map Web Site

This is a summary, in chronological order of maps added to the PetrolMaps website during 2015, the 17th year of operation of the site. It's a hobbyist site and none of the maps shown are for sale, although I do have a small trade/swap list of duplicates from my collection, which I am willing to exchange for maps I don't have on a one for one basis.

On 7th January 2015, our main web address changed to www.petrolmaps.co.uk replacing the old www.ianbyrne.free-online.co.uk address. All subsidiary pages now also start with the www.petrolmaps.co.uk URL, so if you have any favourites bookmarked or links to the old address you'll need to update them. Following this I have been tied up on a number of unrelated projects, so there has been rather a gap in updates, but I hope soon to be able to add some more interesting petrol maps.

Now on line:

A 1956 Avia map printed for Zeller & Gmelin
Zeller & Gmelin celebrate their 150th anniversary next year and although today they are focused in printing inks and lubricants under the Divinol brand, they formerly also distributed fuel, at various times under the brands Divinol, Orag, Chevron and Avia. An Avia map printed for them in 1956 has now been discovered. (Updated 22 December 2015)

Total autoroute maps
While updating the main Total page, I have added extracts from three generation of autoroute maps, covering the A9 in Southern France. I have also added a couple of additional cover images - a 1972 autoroutes map and a 1989 24h/24 (night service stations) map. (Updated 21 December 2015)

A Gulf map for the 1953 Flora
Every 10 years the Netherlands holds a major international festival of gardening under the name "Floriade". However prior to the first Floriade, flower and garden shows were called Flora Exhibitions held at Groenendaal park in Heemstede in 1925, 1935 and 1953. A Gulf map showing access routes to, and parking locations in, Heemstede for the the 1953 Flora ahs been added to the site. (Updated 18 December 2015)

Old and new Texaco from the Netherlands
I have done some tidying up on the Dutch page, and at the same time added an older map than any shown before, believed to date from around 1929 from Texaco. At the other end of the date range, I have added a 2012 Texaco Benelux atlas, published in Holland. And I have swapped the 1957 Esso map of the country for a 1959 one that had not previously been shown on this site. (Updated 12 December 2015)

Octa+'s 2014 locator map
Octa+ is a small Belgian independent brand that has a card sharing programme with Power, Texaco and AVIA. To help motorists find stations accepting the card, it has periodically issued a small map of Belgium or Benelux; the latest example found dates from June 2014. (Updated 12 December 2015)

Texaco Europe
I'm sorry there has been another long pause, but I have now got a 1968 Texaco map of Europe online. In this gap I have found some interesting maps, which I plan to post before the winter is over. (Updated 9 November 2015)

Aquila city maps
The Italian company Aquila, which was later taken over by Total, issued an extensive series of small format city maps from 1958-61. Although a 1961 Bergamo map is the latest to be found, I have added an enlarged scan of an earlier example from Udine. (Updated 3 July 2015)

After three months, I have managed to get some more images on line. The delay has partly been due to other things, but largely due to a leading internet anti-virus product managing to stop my normal computer booting. Still, no data was lost, and I have been building up a small backlog. So here goes:

Fina's final sectional maps of Britain
It appears that Fina's last sectional maps date from 1981, when it had switched to Geographia for the first time. These three sections are very rarely seen (or to put it another way, in over 20 years' collecting maps I hadn't seen them before), and were soon superseded by a single Geographia sheet of the country. I have also added several more enlarged images to this page. (Updated 19 June 2015)

Gulf's 1959 edition of Southern Sweden
In the 1950s and 60s Gulf divided Sweden onto two sheets with similar, though different, cover designs. The 1959 Southern Sweden map has now been added. (Updated 8 March 2015)

A Texaco map of Austria
Texaco was never very big in Austria, as the Caltex joint venture was not present in the country. Instead it acquired a small chain of stations, mainly in Western Austria, through the purchase of Germany's DEA. Nevertheless, it did produce at least one map of the country using typical Platzer cartography. (Updated 6 March 2015)

An early 1930s map of Leipzig
A commercially published street plan of Leipzig was neatly stamped with a red Derop on its cover, presumably indicating it was distributed by a filling station selling their fuels. Inside the map carried 27 small adverts including three relating to petrol or oil companies - BV-Aral, Monopolin (which was marketed by the locally-based Olus Gesellschaft Hromada & Co.) and a local distributor of Spidolin lubricants, that appears to be called Kröfurol. This map is also shown (with less detail) on the Derop page. (Updated 18 January 2015)