POSTAL rail services came to the end of the line last night, ending more than 160 years of transport history.

The last Travelling Post Offices (TPOs) were this morning taken out of service and will eventually be sent to the scrapyard.

All mail will in future be despatched by air or by road.

First launched in 1838, the service reached its peak just before the First World War when 130 services crossed the country and in 1936 it was immortalised in the film and poem Night Mail.

By the end of the last war, the number of trains had dropped to 44.

The two TPOs that made their final journey last night from Low Fell, in Gateshead, to London and Plymouth, via Durham, Darlington and York, were among just ten left in the country.

Those employed on board are being redeployed or offered voluntary redundancy packages, but trade unions have accused the Royal Mail of "industrial recklessness" and warned of extra pollution risks with post on roads.

However, a spokesman for the Royal Mail said yesterday: "Like mail coaches before them, TPOs are now part of the Royal Mail's history - not its future. They were great in their time and did an excellent job. But they were a Victorian answer to a Victorian problem of moving post around the country in the pre-motorway and pre-air era, and the world has moved on."

The axing of the services will save the Royal Mail about £10m.

The company insists its new high-tech, automated equipment can sort 30,000 letters an hour, compared with just 3,000 on the trains.

However, the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, Bill Hayes, said the move would lead to greater congestion of the roads and more pollution.

He said "As a publicly owned company, Royal Mail has a social, as well as a service obligation. This decision will have implications for jobs and investment in the rail infrastructure industry."