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The Transdimensional Gas Station

Well I'll be passing Mjölby again in a few weeks so I'm on track to break the world record for "The Highest number of journey deviations to look for an invisible place". In fact, thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that I am the World Record holder when it comes to "The highest number of journeys made looking for Transdimensional Gas Stations". Show me anybody on this planet who has looked for Transdimensional Gas Stations more than me. Somebody give me a certificate.

I've landed on this thread again and just catching up, so Ringo, did you pass Mjölby again as mentioned above? Anything new to report?
 
I've landed on this thread again and just catching up, so Ringo, did you pass Mjölby again as mentioned above? Anything new to report?

I didn't actually. IIRC the weather was horrible and I just pushed on to my destination. I have since passed the turn off about 4 times since then without having the time to take a de-tour. But every time I pass the turn off I get an urge to just swerve off the motorway and have an adventure.

In fact, I'll be passing it again on Tuesday.
 
I didn't actually. IIRC the weather was horrible and I just pushed on to my destination. I have since passed the turn off about 4 times since then without having the time to take a de-tour. But every time I pass the turn off I get an urge to just swerve off the motorway and have an adventure.

In fact, I'll be passing it again on Tuesday.


Ooh I do hope you get time to have an adventure soon! It must be wonderful to live/work right in the area of something like that.

:)
 
There have been several accounts of visiting pubs and hotels etc but one of the things I find difficult to understand is how payment is accepted - in the UK certainly currency designs change quite frequently and as, for example, shops won't even accept the old one pound coin now I can't see how you wouldn't get pulled up when trying to pay?

Just a quick aside on this point: my partner works on a hotel bar and is frequently given old currency. The oldest has been staggeringly out of date: shillings and threepenny bits in 2019. She accepts them as she collects coins herself, so she'll just put the right coinage in the till from her own purse and keep the archaic coins.

The hotel in question gets a lot of Japanese guests who have been responsible for some of these attempts to pay with old money but she has had seemingly local people pay with old coins, usually just old pound coins which became outdated in 2017. But she has had decades old decimal currency in nearly new condition.

As she accepts these because of her personal interest in numismatics it would be entirely possible for some out of place person to be served. They might be a bit surprised by the smoking ban though!
 
That must be costing her a fortune, Gloucestrian! (makes a note to go to where Gloucestrian's partner works with all those old five pound notes I put aside and order a round...)
 
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Visually, it seems to meet the description.
 
Where is it? The thread starter posted the coordinates to where the station was early in the thread.

Edit: Here's the coordinates posted by threadstarter on page six in this thread.
I cant find the coordinates you send on any map. Can you?
 
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Visually, it seems to meet the description.
OP seemed to suggest the pump was hard by the shed. The new pictures show it some distance away. I'm probably being pedantic, but of all the things liable to change in the years since the OPs experience, the pump's physical location seems unlikely to be one: I'd imagine there's a non-trivial amount of labour involved.

@Rattanswe very evocative pictures, thank you so much for reanimating this thread with them. I'm someone who's never been lucky enough to visit Sweden. Is this sort of gas station a fairly common thing to encounter, or very much a relic?
 
Visually, it seems to meet the description.

Yes, but ... The station Rattanswe has found and posted here isn't in the right place. Here's the full specification of the TGS location from the post in which the OP (David) provided it:

The coordinates are:

58"17'32.49" N
15"10'52.93" E

The road runs in a north-south direction from the tiny village of Västra Harg to the slightly larger township of Mjölby. The road, I think, has changed over the years, but its still going through the same neck of the woods, so to speak.

Post #160:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/the-transdimensional-gas-station.23173/post-697623

Here's an illustration of the lat / long coordinates' ground point in a map context.

TGS-LatLong-Map-A.jpg

This is the location specified by both the lat / long data David posted and his text description of the place being located on a north-south road between Västra Harg and Mjölby.

The building site Rattanswe posted is a few miles north and east of this specified location - north of Mantorp and on the other (north) side of the E4.
 
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... Is this sort of gas station a fairly common thing to encounter, or very much a relic?

If you follow the road all the way from Västra Harg to Mjölby using Google Street View you'll find multiple buildings along the way which are candidates for a garage / gas station. I've done this exercise some time ago, but none of the candidates I spied were an exact match to David's text description. In any case, none closely resembling David's description of the place were at the specific location indicated by his lat / long specifications.

Some of these candidate buildings are (were; could have been ... ) rural garages. Others would seem to have been outbuildings on a farm which seem to have been storage or workshop places.

My point is that there are multiple buildings along that road that might have been mis-identified as (commercial) gas stations or garages offering fuel.

As I believe I've mentioned earlier, I still think there's a strong possibility David and his co-worker weren't where he recalls them being on the way back to their kommun headquarters that day.
 
Some of the old farms had a gas station pump for their tractor and harvesting machine.
 
Some of the old farms had a gas station pump for their tractor and harvesting machine.

Yep - that's the sort of thing I was alluding to with the mention of outbuildings. There are homes with such outbuildings in the immediate vicinity of the location David specified, but the outbuildings are not sitting directly on or beside the east side of the road as David describes.
 
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Maybe they warent in västra harg just that day an village calld normlösa looks simular to västra harg. The gas station I post is very simular to what david told. Hope david take a look here and answer after all this time
 
@Rattanswe Nära men nära skjuter ingen hare. Och välkommen till FTMB.

Close but not right. The description has a few vital points not seen here:

1. A delapidated farmhouse roofed with asbestos-like fireproof plates. Right in front of it was the gas shed.
2. It was a long shed structure with corrugated iron on the sides and roofed with tar paper.
3. The door and window were on the short end, facing the direction from which they came, not on the long side.
4. Orange striped gas pump.
 
@Rattanswe Nära men nära skjuter ingen hare. Och välkommen till FTMB.

Close but not right. The description has a few vital points not seen here:

1. A delapidated farmhouse roofed with asbestos-like fireproof plates. Right in front of it was the gas shed.
2. It was a long shed structure with corrugated iron on the sides and roofed with tar paper.
3. The door and window were on the short end, facing the direction from which they came, not on the long side.
4. Orange striped gas pump.
I've been searching for orange striped old gas pumps from Swedish photos on Google image. No find so far. It's usually Full orange, yellow, white or light blue.
White gas pumps with three red or orange stripes in the middle.
1585237452732.png
 
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I've been searching for orange striped old gas pumps from Swedish photos on Google image. No find so far. It's usually Full orange, yellow, white or light blue.
White gas pumps with three red or orange stripes in the middle.

There are a couple of issues in interpreting David's description of the gas pump. One has to do with the color, and the other with what counts as "striped."

If the pump was truly orange (in original finish; as new) that would suggest a Gulf branded pump. Gulf was the only transnational brand that used a strictly or predominantly orange motif. Statoil used blue and orange (orange typically being the secondary color), and Statoil was the most commonly encountered gas station brand in Sweden at the time (early 1990s).

However. ...

Shell used combinations of yellow and red. BP used yellow secondary trim on their green pumps. As Vardoger's pic illustrates, the Esso branded pumps tended to be prominently trimmed in red.

Some of the yellow and / or red color might be interpreted as borderline "orange." Furthermore, fading and / or rusting can turn a yellow / red metal surface into something more like "orange."

If the pump wasn't a branded commercial pump it could have been any color. Orange is a common enough color for industrial / farm fuel pumps.

This vintage rusted Gulf gas pump is the only one I've found that is orange, arguably "striped", and definitely located in Sweden. I found it on a Swedish teacher's blog. Its location within Sweden wasn't specified.

814ffbe779b8b0a6a20780949d589553--var.jpg

I include this photo solely as an example - not a suggested "hit" for the TGS pump.

Edit to Add:

Here's the blog where I found the photo:

https://jansyrligheter.wordpress.com
 
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Hello peeps i going to hargsvägen right now! I can post pictures after. Something special you want me to look for?

A Transdimensional Gas Station?

I've explored all 5 roads into and out of Västra Harg. I can't find anything remotely like the descriptions only lots of places that are vaguely similar. I've approached from Mjölby, Sya, Mantorp, Strålsnäs and Önnebo and posted pics of anything of interest.

But it would be great for someone else to do it too - a fresh pair of eyes, so to speak. So any pics you can upload will be brilliant.

I wrote earlier that I've always had plenty of petrol when doing it - you could try with your petrol running low and see if it only magically appears when needed. :cool:
 
I recently met someone who is an avid collector of “old stuff”, eccentric and quite well off. His collections are separately housed and themed and one theme is a mock 50s style fuel station/workshop filled with signs, cans, tools and all manner of related things.

Could the OP have stumbled on something like this rather than a real fuel station? This would assume that he was wrong about the location in some way.
 
The clues to the TGS location (per the OP David) include the following:

- It was encountered while driving from Västra Harg to Mjölby on a primary (paved) road.
- It was at least 5 - 7 kilometers from Västra Harg and up to 10 km from Mjölby.
- It was on the right side of the road given their direction of travel..
- The TGS building was a long shed or shed-like structure.
- This building sat directly adjacent to the tarmac / road. ("right up against the edge of the tarmac of the road")
- A fuel pump was positioned at the end of the building visible as they approached (headed toward Mjölby).
- The building had at least one window through which the stacked automotive supplies could be seen.
- It's not clear what sort of parking arrangement (lawn? dirt patch? graveled area?) was available for parking next to the fuel pump.

One other thing ...

David mentioned he and his co-worker noticed the need for fuel when entering one of the few places along that road where there was forest / woods on both sides. They drove for a few minutes before finding the TGS. When David went back in 2005 he made a point to learn the identity of "... who owned that stretch of woods where I believe the station appeared to us." This implies the TGS was located in an area along their route that day that was enclosed on both sides by forest / woods.
 
The clues to the TGS location (per the OP David) include the following:

- It was encountered while driving from Västra Harg to Mjölby on a primary (paved) road.
- It was at least 5 - 7 kilometers from Västra Harg and up to 10 km from Mjölby.
- It was on the right side of the road given their direction of travel..
- The TGS building was a long shed or shed-like structure.
- This building sat directly adjacent to the tarmac / road. ("right up against the edge of the tarmac of the road")
- A fuel pump was positioned at the end of the building visible as they approached (headed toward Mjölby).
- The building had at least one window through which the stacked automotive supplies could be seen.
- It's not clear what sort of parking arrangement (lawn? dirt patch? graveled area?) was available for parking next to the fuel pump.

One other thing ...

David mentioned he and his co-worker noticed the need for fuel when entering one of the few places along that road where there was forest / woods on both sides. They drove for a few minutes before finding the TGS. When David went back in 2005 he made a point to learn the identity of "... who owned that stretch of woods where I believe the station appeared to us." This implies the TGS was located in an area along their route that day that was enclosed on both sides by forest / woods.

Also (although this may no longer be the case):

"Come to think about it, I seem to remember that that stretch of road lay in some type of radio shadow. The regular radio stations always broke up at some point along that road, although I can’t remember if we had the radio on on this particular occasion."
 
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