Felix Bus Services: Lifetime's hobby was inspired by a boyhood bus passion

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When Paul Chambers’ dad used to take him into work at Midland General bus company as a lad, little did he know he would be inspiring his son with what would become a hobby for life – and material for a book. Paul, of Heanor, tells Hilary Burton how he was moved to write the history of Felix Bus Services.

Felix bus services

WHEN Paul Chambers was a small boy of about nine or 10, he loved to go to work with his father at Midland General bus company.

He said: “Midland General is long gone. It got taken over by Trent in the 1970s.

“But back then, my dad, John, was a coach builder and I used to go with him at the weekends.

“If you were a coach builder, you would spend your overtime driving at weekends, so I would be sitting there in the buses, pressing the buttons and shutting the doors.

“I also remember going out on day trips and mystery tours with him.

“I remember we would stop at a pub and have a shandy and a packet of crisps.”

The love of buses, thus born in Paul, stayed with him throughout senior school.

And it has now inspired him to write a book, telling the history of Stanley-based Felix Bus Services Ltd, an independent bus company which has been running vehicles between Ilkeston and Derby for the last 80 years.

In spite of his passion, Paul (43) never made his career in the bus industry.

Instead, he works for a shop-fitting firm in Alfreton, where he is in charge of the drawing office.

But his love of wheeled mass transport has given him a lifelong hobby as well as inspiring the book.

Paul has a PSV licence, which means he can drive a bus, and he spends his weekends working on restoring old buses, mainly from the 1950s onwards, and taking them to rallies and shows all over the country.

Paul, who was born and brought up in Ilkeston but now lives in Heanor, joked: “Writing the book and putting it all together took me about two months. But getting round to doing it took me more than 20 years.

“When I was younger, I thought it would be quite easy to write a book.

“I talked to Felix when I was about 17 and they were very helpful, and gave me all the stuff I needed.

“But then real life took over and it’s only now that I have managed to put the book together.”

Of course, in many ways, it’s a good thing Paul waited. Producing a book today, with the advent of PCs and easy-to-operate desktop publishing programmes, is a much easier affair than it was 25 years ago.

The appeal of writing a book about Felix, he said, was that it was an independent bus company.

Paul said: “The big boys such as Trent Barton have all had books written about them, but the smaller companies sometimes get left by the wayside.

“Felix has been there for more than 80 years and it is still going, so I felt it was time that the history was set down and recorded. The people at Felix are very pleased that I have done it.

“They said they were waiting for someone to put together a book but it was difficult to find the time if you are running a bus company. ”

The book features photographs from the last 80 years, starting with a shot of the company’s first bus, a Crossley which started life as a lorry serving the War Department in the First World War.

Pictured with it is the founder of the Felix firm, Norman Frost, who was born and brought up in Stanley, and two of his sisters.

It finishes, appropriately enough, with a shot of one of the sisters, Dora Seale, marking her 105th birthday this year. The pictures in the book mostly come from Felix itself, though some have been taken or bought by Paul over the years.

Felix was founded in 1921 when Norman, who worked at Rolls-Royce in Derby, bought the lorry for £500.

The name Felix came from the song Felix Kept on Walking, which was a popular ditty of the time

The Felix cat emblem has appeared on the buses in many guises and the firm has also had changes of livery, from the initial chocolate and cream to today’s red and maroon.

The song that gave the firm its name has been especially apt over the years. For example, in the severe winter of 1947, the company supplied crews with shovels to dig out buses stuck in snow drifts so they could reach their customers.

Paul said that while he was putting together the book, he came across a number of stories which served as testament to how the firm was perceived by bus users.

He said: “Passengers were never left at bus stops and 30 standing on a bus would be nothing out of the ordinary. On one occasion, a 29-seat vehicle was stopped by police on Derby Road, Ilkeston, containing 64 passengers and a dog!”

In 1975, Norman Frost died at 76 and, although there was an offer to buy the firm made by Trent, his nephew Geoff Middup became the firm’s new owner, a position he still holds today.

Now, more than 80 years on from the first services, Felix still operates the Ilkeston-Stanley-Derby route as a mainstay of the business.

In recent years, the relationship with Trent Barton has meant that Felix has also been involved in running the Ilkeston Flyer and the Black Cat routes.

Paul’s hobby of rebuilding buses has seen him bring about 10 back to their former glory in the last 25 years, including one, an ex-Midland General double-decker, that he part-owned.

But he found that, like owning a racehorse, that was a rather expensive way to spend time, so now he offers his services for free to other owners of buses in need of repair, from a simple paint job to a full restoration.

Sometimes it’s tricky to get the parts needed, but there is a network of aficionados who help each other out.

Paul said: “It’s very tricky to get the right colour when you are restoring paintwork, and there is always someone who will tell you if you’ve got it wrong.

“When Mason’s Paints was still in Derby, they used to be able to mix paint to match the exact shade you wanted so, when I did my own bus, I scraped a bit of paint off the inside so that I knew it was an exact match.”

Paul has never been bothered by the “trainspotter” aspect of his passion.

He joked: “I have spent the last 30 years having this hobby, so the fact that some people at work call me ‘Blakey’, after the character from On The Buses, really doesn’t matter.

“It’s amazing how many people are genuinely interested when I show them the book. At the moment I am working on a Midland General Leyland National.

“It’s not stored in my back garden, although I have paced it out to see if I could get a bus in there.

“But I don’t think my wife would be very happy with that.”

Paul has had 500 copies of the book printed and is about two-thirds of the way towards breaking even on the venture – not that he is doing it for profit but rather for the love of his subject.

And he has found his services much in demand for talks to local history societies.

The only problem he has had is limiting himself to a 40-minute talk.

He said: “Once I have answered all the questions and memories from the audience, I often find I have spoken for as much as two hours.”