This is what I've done with my Walthers "Bill's Super Service" gas station. I think Atlas O now has the tooling for this one. It's a work in progress. Someday when I have nothing else to work on, I'll repaint this in proper Texaco colors, which will be a pain because nearly everything that's red should be green, and all the windows and doors are glued in. Also on my list of details to correct is the signage on the building. I like the shape and size of this model, though. It reminds me a lot of gas stations I worked at in high school and my early 20's.
I customized this structure heavily from its as-built form, bringing most of the detail items over from a Texaco gas station model I once owned that wasn't holding up well over time. I added LED lighting in the office and the service bays that's brighter in the daytime and dimmer at night, wired to my DCS AIU. In the day I have a welding effect in the bay with a car on the lift. (Does anyone know where I can get an O scale figure of a man with his arms raised, as if he were doing welding on the car?) The hoist cylinder was made from a 1/4" clevis pin that extends below the building. The grease pit was fabricated from mat board that was painted flat black and glued below the opening that was already in the service bay floor. It's deep enough for an O scale man to stand in. In the office I added a "tile" floor made from a checkerboard pattern I found online, reduced to represent the older 9"x9" tiles that were once everywhere, then printed on glossy photo paper to give the appearance of being freshly waxed. The lights on the pump island are Lionel boulevard lamps that I removed from their bases and mounted as you see in the image. I replaced the stock lamps with LEDs, which in one of those great "art imitates life" situations, photograph greenish the same way prototype fluorescent lamps would. I wrapped the chimney in the same MicroMark brick paper I've used elsewhere. Fred and Barney and the Flintmobile, as well as the wrecker, the Coke bottles and the Coke machine, are courtesy of DieCast Direct. The '41 Ford is from MTH. The revolving Texaco sign is, of course, from Miller Engineering. I painted the sign pole gloss white.
The driveway is mat board that I painted a concrete color and then scribed with a fresh X-Acto blade. At some point I'll weather it but, first things first. I need to cover up all that plywood and build a retaining wall for the elevated track. By the way, I use mat board for my paved roads too. It's easy to work with and looks good once it's painted and weathered.
In case you're wondering why the entire station is raised, it's because I use Mianne benchwork and in this location it was too difficult to cut a hole for the entire structure to drop flush in the way I planned it. I didn't know where this was going until after all the plywood was in, and then cutting a 17"x19" hole would've been a pain with the benchwork's I-beams in the way. For me it's no biggie.
I hope this gives you some ideas for your own layout.
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