LAST week on these pages we included a series of photographs of two of York's famous but long-vanished chocolate factories - the former Rowntree factory on Tanner's Moat, and the former Terry's factory at Clementhorpe.

Those pictures all came from Explore York's wonderful Imagine York archive. Today, we continue the chocolate theme, with a series of photographs from our own archive.

One of the most striking images shows workmen replacing bricks in the huge Elect Cocoa sign on the side of the then Rowntree-Mackintosh factory on Haxby Road in 1973.

Elect Cocoa had first been launched by Joseph Rowntree in 1887. Marketed as ‘more than a drink, a food’, it quickly proved popular. Joseph, who had initially been opposed to advertising, had begun placing discreet notices 'commending' Rowntree Confectionary in popular magazines Tit-Bits and Answers in 1886. But with Elect Cocoa the Rowntere advertising machine went into overdrive.

In 1897, a nine-foot replica of a tin of Elect Cocoa began touring the North of England on a motor car.

It was Joseph's so, Arnold's first venture into advertising, and his next idea was just as dramatic. A barge covered with adverts for Elect Cocoa joined the Oxford versus Cambridge Boat Race the same year, drawn by mechanically propelled swans.

So successful were the campaigns that soon demand dictated that Rowntree’s move to larger premises. In July 1890, a 24-acre site was purchased off Haxby Road for the 'modern' Rowntree’s Cocoa Works. It was presumably then that the huge Elect Cocoa sign was produced.

In the years leading up to the Great War, the popularity of Elect Cocoa declined, and during the depression of the 1920s it was abandoned. Instead, the number of Rowntree lines was slimmed down and the products which went on to become household names were launched: KitKat, Black Magic, Aero, Dairy Box, Smarties, Rolos and Polos all came out in the 1930s. But Elect remained in that sign...

Also pictured today is the old Rowntree Halt station, which would have been familiar to generations of Rowntree workers. Rowntree Halt was a minor unmanned railway stop on the Foss Islands branch line in York. Located on the southern edge of the Rowntree's chocolate factory, the station was opened in 1927 by the London and North Eastern Railway to provide a low-volume, not publicly advertised passenger service to the Rowntree factory for workers commuting from areas south of York such as Selby and Doncaster.

The halt itself was little more than a single short platform located a few yards west of a signal-protected siding that allowed freight directly into the factory complex. Passenger services ceased in 1988, and the station was officially closed on 8 July 1989.The line was dismantled and turned into a cycle track.

We have one photograph from 1988 with the station sign still in place - and one showing the sign being taken down. Talk about end of an era.

Most of our photos today come from Rowntrees. But to preserve the balance, we though we ought to include at least one Terry's photograph. It shows students from Ampleforth School touring the Easter Egg production lines at Terry's in 1973...

Stephen Lewis