Yellow and blue and various lengthy stages over the years, the city’s buses today are beginning to don a revamped national colour scheme employing both - and sea green - on the same vehicle
The splendidly titled Newcastle upon Tyne Corporation Transport & Electricity Undertaking - no hyphens or capital ‘u’ in the city’s name - had colourful vehicles. Different colours for different vehicles at different times.
When Iain MacGregor visited in the 1960s, its municipal diesel buses and trolleybuses were yellow and cream with maroon wheels and wings. When playing up to the old bus joke of waiting ages for one and then three come together, locals nicknamed them ‘bunches of bananas’. But these distinctive colours had only been used that way since 1949.
Its electric trams were dark maroon, yellow and cream and remained so until the last were withdrawn in 1950. Trolleybuses were yellow and cream with three chocolate bands when they started in 1935, while from 1912 until 1949 the buses were dark blue and cream.
Variations of yellow and cream survived transfer to PTE ownership (Tyneside in January 1970, Tyne & Wear in April 1974) and indeed it was Newcastle’s principal colour that swept away the colours o…
