TRAVELLERS suffered severe disruption as 100mph winds battered Britain forcing the partial closure of the West Coast Main Line between Glasgow and London yesterday.
Operator Virgin called all of its trains into stations after a fire broke out on an overhead cable at Crewe and Network Rail shut the line between Carlisle and Preston at 7pm for about two hours because of the hurricane-force winds.
No buses were laid on to allow passengers to complete their journeys - with Virgin blaming dangerous road conditions.
Last night Network Rail confirmed the line had reopened and a normal service was expected to run today.
The violent storm, captured in a dramatic satellite image released by Dundee University, is the latest event in what has been described as an "almost unparalleled natural crisis" by assistant chief of the defence staff Major General Patrick Sanders, who is coordinating the armed forces response to the flooding in the south of England.
The severity of the rail problems emerged when Virgin announced around 6pm on the social media site Twitter that no further trains would leave London Euston because of "various problems across the network". It then posted a dramatic message in capital letters urging "all customers to abandon travel".
Services later resumed to Manchester and Liverpool.
A Virgin spokesman said last night: "The wind may be dying down but what we feared might happen seems to have happened in that a number of trees have blown on to the track in the Lancaster area and Network Rail can't open the line until the trees have been cleared."
Earlier yesterday, desperate travellers expressed their anger at the disruption. Darren Milner tweeted: "Total joke. All Virgin trains to Manchester cancelled. Euston utter chaos."
At Glasgow Central, Algerian tourist Adel Bouhassane, who was heading to London to see relatives, said: "I was told the train I was booked on wasn't going to London and to get on another train, but then they said that one was only going to Birmingham and I could try get to London from there.
"But I didn't want to risk being stuck in Birmingham. I'd rather be with my family in Glasgow and go to London later."
The ScotRail overnight sleeper between Glasgow Central and London Euston, which looked as if it would be cancelled, departed after Network Rail carried out checks on the line.
Meanwhile, as warnings were issued over high winds and snow for most of Scotland police said the weather conditions had caused "carnage" on some roads.
Motorists suffered disruption on higher ground, including an accident in the Highlands involving a heavy goods vehicle and a van, which left one man trapped on the A9 at Drumochter Pass. Both drivers were taken to hospital. Their injuries were not thought to be life-threatening.
There was also disruption on the A82 at Ballachulish with a jack-knifed lorry and several other minor collisions, which did not result in any injuries.
Road users were advised to use caution crossing the A9 Dornoch Bridge due to high winds, and the snow gates were closed at Cock Bridge in Aberdeenshire.
Elsewhere, the M74 south-bound was shut at the Happendon Services, South Lanarkshire, following an accident at 5.40pm.
First Minister Alex Salmond chaired a Scottish Government Resilience Committee meeting yesterday to assess preparedness.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article