This term has long outgrown the vernacular and finds itself used in the official communications of the canton of Solothurn.

There was a connection in Niederbipp to the also metre-gauge Langenthal-Jura Railway (Langenthal-Jura-Bahn; LJB), which had opened on the Langenthal–Niederbipp–Oensingen Schulhaus route in 1907.

On 1 January 1958, the LJB and the Langenthal–Melchnau-Bahn merged with the Oberaargau-Jura Railways (Oberaargau-Jura-Bahnen; OJB), with which the SNB concluded a new cooperation agreement in 1959.

An early sign of the later merger was a formal agreement that was contracted on 5 April 1984 between the BTI, the OJB, the SNB, the Oberaargauischen Automobilkurse (a bus company; OAK), the Ligerz-Tessenberg-Bahn (a funicular railway; LTB) and the Bielersee-Schiffahrts-Gesellschaft (Lake Biel Ferry Company; BSG) to form Oberaargau-Solothurn-Seeland-Transport (OSST).

The OSST partners BTI, RVO, SNB and OAK finally completed the merger into Aare Seeland mobil (ASm) in 1999.

The orange-coloured vehicles, sometimes referred to as Schüttelbecher ("shaker cups"), were stored, sold or scrapped.

The new program was called Star (for: Schmalspur-Triebzug für attraktiven Regionalverkehr—"narrow-gauge multiple unit for attractive regional transport").