The Lego Esso Service Station

 
The Esso Service Station is the iconic flagship of Lego around 1960 as far as I'm concerned. It took a central place in the "front page" photograph of the cardboard town plan and was the highest-priced Lego kit when it came out, I believe in 1958.

These illustrations are from a contemporary folder, with prices in Belgian Francs. To give some comparison, a plain loaf of bread cost 7 to 7.50 francs at the time.

I actually have two Esso service stations. The one at left I built from instructions found on the internet, mostly from period-correct cellulose acetate parts. I didn't have white-framed windows or a white garage door, so those are red. The correct red-trimmed plates for the roof were only recently added after I found a lot of them on a local fleabay for next to no money at all. Because of that red trim these plates can't be bleached back to their original white, so they show their age. Or ages plural, because they have discoloured differently from each other.

The station at right is an original glued-together display model I found later, where the roof has discoloured nicely to the same degree. It only has red trim on two sides but that's entirely original.

The advantage of the glue is that the building stays nicely together - because cellulose acetate has far less grip than modern ABS bricks, the one I built myself will easily come apart if you try to lift it up by its roof...

Keen-eyed readers may note that the Bedford tank truck at left has the original text in Danish, the one on the right is the international version with text in English.

At the time, Lego plates had a distinctive waffle pattern underneath. But the Esso service station stayed in the range long enough to have also been issued with the plates we are now familiar with. I even have a few with remains of red trim, from the lot I found recently.

As shown in the folder image above, the Esso service station set came complete with a tank truck, sign and petrol pumps. It's shown here sitting on the place especially intended for it on the town plan. The Esso barrel truck and trailer were issued separately to complement the station set - the 'barrel' load I added myself.

Sign and pumps were also available separately in a little slide-out box, as shown below.