THE photographs we carried last week of Tommy Air's boatbuilding business on the Ouse prompted erader and local historian Peter Stanhope to get in touch, with a photograph and memories of his own.

His photo - which must have been taken before 1910, Peter says, because it shows the it shows the 'old' Boyes store on Ouse Bridge before the fire and rebuild - shows Air's rental rowing boats moored along the Esplanade.

They ranged in size from a single rower 'skiff' up to family boats with three oarsmen with (usually) wife or mum trying to steer with the rudder from the rear bench seat," Peter writes.

"It was all great fun and enjoyed by many thousands over the decades up until the time when stupidity spoiled it for everyone when drunken vandals started to have 'battles' in the river. That ended it for boat rentals on the Ouse in York (though Knaresborough still manages have a successful and peaceful boat rentals business)."

Peter remembers Tommy Airs himself. "I was a young lad still at school in the early 1950s and I used to work on his rowing boats," he writes. "I 'fell in' three times but thankfully always at the edge of the river, never in the middle!"

His photo, he points out, also shows the hey-day of barges off loading their cargoes across the river at Queen's Staith.

Reader Ken Mellor from Selby also got in touch, with a 1925 photograph showing Chanoler Whin junction two miles west of York. "This was where the old line to King's Cross diverged to the left, through Naburn and Selby," Ken explains. "The photograph was taken in 1925 just after the Centenary Express had passed marking the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825.

"It was given to me by the signal man at the Junction signal box who I came to know well around 1950."

Thanks to both Ken and Peter for the photographs - and the memories...