Midland Fox: A Pictorial History, 1984 to 1997

Formed from the renaming of Midland Red East in January 1984, Midland Fox was one of the first to do away with National Bus Company (NBC) corporate red livery, opting instead for a bright-yellow-and-red scheme. It took on Leicester City Transport over restrictions on picking up and setting down passengers within Leicester’s boundaries – and won – and introduced one of the largest minibus operations anywhere in the country.

It went from the management buy-out in 1987 that took it out of the NBC to a constituent part of the Drawlane Group, later to become British Bus. Services covered the whole of Leicestershire, but Midland Fox buses and coaches could also be seen in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, the West Midlands, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire, and several smaller operators were bought out. Vehicle purchasing policy tended towards second-hand vehicles, though there were some notable acquisitions of new stock. In 1996, British Bus was sold to the Cowie Group.

A year later its bus operations were renamed Arriva, and Midland Fox became Arriva Fox County, which is effectively where the Midland Fox story ends.Andrew Bartlett tells the little-known story of this familiar face in the Midlands through his high-quality photographs and unpublished archive images.