Barrow buses were going into space in 1998 to make life better for the passengers.

A team of Swedish engineers had been in town fitting seven new-single deck midi buses with hi-tech communications pods, including a geostationary positioning system that used satellites to plot exactly where a bus was.

Barrow became the scene of bus pioneering partly thanks to the Royal Navy. The minesweeper HMS Walney and the Furness Enterprise development agency jointly promoted Barrow during a visit to Sweden, attracting the Swedish company Thoreb to the town as a result of their hard work.

Now it had a UK boss, the Swede Dan Andersson, who was living in Bardsea; an office in Barrow and other employees, who worked on the hi-tech components of new experimental services being piloted in Barrow to encourage people to use buses rather than a car.

Mr Andersson said: "The operator will be able to learn from the system and make timetables more suitable for the passenger."

When the new service began, passengers would hear a "ghost voice" telling them what the next stop was and also see the announcement come up on a screen.

The satellite links on the bus roofs would tell a central control office where buses were to within 50 metres, using longitude and latitude calculations via a satellite.

Managers would have the option of using information from the 'shark fin' radio communication mast from each on-board bus computer to work out where buses were "to within half a metre."

The on-board computers knew all the route information, including the exact distance between stops, enabling the system to plot.

Drivers also had a dashboard screen to tell them whether they were early or late or on time and when the next stop was.

It would help drivers to drive the bus at the proper speed so they got to the stops at the appropriate time.