BACK in 1912, when the idea of a two-car family was as outlandish a fantasy as taking an airship to Mars, a new bus service was an event - a chance to glimpse never-before-seen places.

Not that the passengers who used the first United bus, a cold and dangerous service from Bishop Auckland, in County Durham, to Durham City, would recognise the coaches of today.

But the sight of a bright red bus adorned with a United badge hoving into view has, for 90 years, gladdened the hearts of North-Easterners stuck at rainy bus stops. At least it did until now.

For yesterday, the region's last red United bus was resprayed in the aqua-marine of Arriva - and a transport era came to an end.

"How a mother with children, or anybody carrying anything, ever even got on those first buses is beyond me," said Arriva marketing manager Mike Barber after the ceremonial respray yesterday.

"They were real bone-shakers, and absolutely freezing, although they must have seemed quite modern then.

"I think there was a few of us had mixed feelings today. United was a long-established name, but life goes on."

The dangers involved in the early days of bus transport were revealed by Robert Atkinson, transport history enthusiast, chairman of the Friends of Beamish Museum and son of the museum's founder.

He said: "A lot of people in Medomsley and Consett will know of the disaster of 1910.

"The so-called Coronation Car, named that because it was a coronation year, crashed when the brakes failed and a number of members of the Consett Co-op Choir, on their way to the Tudhoe Valley Flower Show, died.

"That bus was operated by a man called Mathew Martin, who was well-known for transporting people on his bus.

"The whole industry was small-scale then. Individuals, like a man from a well-known family in Craghead, near Stanley, would simply run a bus.

"There were no rules, or massive companies, or anything like that in the days before the likes of United."

Operators hope that the story of the bus service in the North-East has as much future as it has history, if efforts to encourage people to use public transport prove successful.