Waxing lyrical about old times in York

One was none other than Janet Bowen - the young woman pictured on June 16 styling the hair of waxwork models of The Queen, Princess Anne and Princess Diana.

The photo was from the mid 1980s - possibly 1984, says Janet, who is still cutting hair 30 years later. She has her own salon these days - Sheridans in Nunnery Lane - but back then she was one of ten or so girls working at Salaminas (we think that is the correct spelling: apologies if we have got it wrong) in Clifford Street.

When the wax museum opened in Friargate, it was Janet who was asked to style the hair of some of the wax models. As well as doing the three Royal models, she also styled Nancy Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, she says.

For the Press photograph, three other girls working in the salon sat in chairs with gowns draped around them, and the model heads were perched on top of them. So those are real women beneath the wax heads!

A number of readers got in touch about the photograph of a railway production line we carried in Yesterday Once More the same day as the waxworks photo. All agreed that the photograph was of the York Wagon Works, not the carriageworks.

"These were located at the other end of Wilton Rise bridge, across the line from the carriage works," wrote reader Bob Hutchinson, who himself started work on the carriageworks side in September 1954. He can't date the photograph precisely, he admits. "But they closed well before the carriageworks, I don't suppose there will be many still living that remember them."

Another reader, who didn't want his name used, suggested the photographs didn't actually show a production line at all.

"Since the wagons are clearly not new and are of differing types, I would suggest that it's a repair line," he said.

Miss Joyce McDougald, meanwhile, wrote in about the photograph of Gurkha bandsmen on parade on September 15, 1971, that we also printed in Yesterday Once More on June 16. She is now 93, and has been keeping a diary since she was 91/2 years old. She checked her diary entry for September 15, 1971 - it was a Wednesday - and could find no reference to a parade of Gurkhas that day.

"However, two days later I write: 'I went (to the Tattoo) and thoroughly enjoyed all of it as the majority of items were bands, marching and extremely clever displays,'" she says in a letter.

"Such displays don't happen without rehearsal, and maybe during the run-up to the Tattoo units arrived in York and stayed at the Barracks." Thank you for the lovely letter, Miss McDougald.

And finally, Catherine Pickard from Dringhouses got in touch about a photograph we carried in Yesterday Once More on May 26. It showed a Dalek holding up traffic near Clifford's Tower in 1988. "This was... just outside where the Museum of Automata used to be," she writes.

Catherine also sent us copies of two old postcards showing what we assume were exhibits in the museum - together with a copy of the text for a guided walk of York she used to lead as an Age UK volunteer.

"The Museum of Automata was located on Tower Street from the 1980s until 1996," it says.

"This housed mechanical exhibits with moving parts with fascinating names such as The Harmonious Monk and The Smoking Moon Dandy (which featured in a James Bond film). The exhibition was privately owned and was known as the Jack Donovan collection. It was relocated to Japan in 1996."

Thanks to all for their contributions.

To finish this week, we have a few more photographs from our archives. We begin with a dramatic photograph of York Minster's Great Peter bell - a ten-and-a-half ton king of bells which, in January 1992, continued to call the faithful to prayer while the Minster's main peal of 12 bells was silent.

Next up we have a view of York's city walls. The date is September 8, 1972, and the picture shows York Corporation workmen Les Nicolson and Bill Acomb using scythes to cut the grass beneath the walls.

And finally, there are two photographs of the Haxby level crossing: one taken in November 1965, when it was new, and another taken 11 years later, in March 1976.