When my local bus blew up!

These may seem a little odd, but yesterday morning turned out to be very, very interesting for me.

I was just working on my comic at my computer, hearing the local bus (#80) that runs past the front door of my house coming up the hill, when all of a sudden there was the most outrageous bang followed by the bus stuttering for power, it then limped to a halt outside my front drive in a fog of acrid black smoke, whereupon the driver immediately opened the engine bay door and started dousing the street with sand from what had apparently been a fuel leak.

Passengers were unloaded, and Country Bus sent up another two buses to cover. Eventually their engineers arrived in their company coloured LDV Convoy, as did a local hero of the roads, the Count of Heathfield, a gigantic tow truck used to rescue HGV's and Coaches.

The bus is a 2004 Dennis Dart SLF with SC Coachbuilders body, and is a regular on this route. I overhead one of the engineers mentioning something to do with the 'Big End', which is part of the Connecting Rod, and connects to the bearing journal on the crank throw.