Gas station pumps?

[p51]

I'm in the process of scratch building a country store for my model railroad layout. I already have, on order, a kit for one of the prewar gas pumps, the one with the big glass visible ball at the top.
I was looking at photographs of similar stores, and I can't find an example where there is only one pump. I'm assuming one was for ethyl gas? Would it be correct at all to have a small town gas station with only one pump?
Also, from a photograph of such a store, I see the two pumps are totally different colors. Did most gas companies have a consistent color for the different kinds of pumps?
Based on prewar photographs of local (to the area I model) store in real life, I'm going to make it a Texaco brand. Would anyone have a clue what colors would be correct for that?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The standard Texaco pump paint for your era was a deep "fire engine" red, and it would have dispensed "Fire Chief" regular gasoline. The globe would have been the regular Texaco star-in-a-circle-with-a-green-capital-T logo, with a Fire Chief "chief's hat" pump plate bolted to the pump front.

Texaco's premium brand in the early 1940s, "Sky Chief," was dispensed from a silver pump. The globe and pump plate would have carried the same "Sky Chief" insignia.

Both of these grades were leaded, and would have had a Contains Lead warning plaque. Texaco stopped selling Ethyl-branded premium in 1937, when the Sky Chief brand was introduced. The insignia shown on the pump in the photo dates between 1930 and 33. Between 1933 and 1937, the "Fire Chief Ethyl" brand was used, which used the regular Fire Chief pump plate with an Ethyl logo added underneath.

Many of the smaller country-store stations would have had one pump, selling only the regular grade. Often these stations would have carried a local or regional brand, or no brand at all. Some independent stations would even offer multiple brands -- Texaco and Socony and Esso and Gulf, for example, all at one outlet. It all depended on how badly those brands wanted distribution in that area.

Most oil companies sold only regionally during the Era. For many years, Texaco was the only brand sold in all 48 states.

There were many, many different styles of the old "visible" pumps, and they were still common at rural general-store type outlets into the 1960s.

 

[p51]

Wow, thanks very much for all that info!
Looks like a single red pump would be historically correct for what I'm trying to do.
Thank you also for being able to identify the time frame for that photograph. I assumed it was from the early 1930s, but wasn't absolutely sure.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It helps when you grew up in a Texaco station. Look forward to seeing the results!