Trains across Perthshire were cancelled after a series of lightning strikes battered the area on Wednesday morning.
Thunderstorms hit Tayside and Fife on Wednesday morning and caused chaos to railway infrastructure on the line between Perth and Inverness, with some early services between the two cities cancelled.
The lightning strikes led to damaged equipment, blown fuses, points failures and caused level crossings across the network to fail.
The worst of the damage is said to have taken place between 6am and 7am as the thunderstorms moved north through Scotland.
Journeys to Edinburgh were also affected by the storms with one service from the capital terminating in Perth. Buses were put on for people travelling to and from the Highlands.
Both ScotRail and London North Eastern Railway (LNER) journeys were affected.
Passengers travelling on Caledonian Sleeper services also faced delays after lightning strikes damaged signalling equipment in the north of England overnight from Tuesday into Wednesday.
Cancellations and delays affected services between the Fair City and Inverness until about noon.
A ScotRail spokesman said: “We’re sorry to our customers who had their journey disrupted this morning. Engineers worked as quickly as possible to fix the signal faults and get services back to normal.
“Anyone delayed by 30 minutes or more is entitled to claim money back through our delay repay guarantee on our website or mobile app.”
On Wednesday morning LNER posted to Twitter: “Due to lightning damaging equipment between Inverness and Perth all lines are disrupted.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused to your journey today.”
A Network Rail spokeswoman said engineers spent the morning fixing the problems on the railway network in Perthshire and the Highlands.
She added: “The weather conditions over the course of the morning have caused several track circuit failures and level crossing barrier failures across the rail network.
“We have teams on stand-by all over the network to make sure that issues are resolved as quickly as possible.”
NEW: We are dealing with a signalling issue between Perth and Pitlochry caused by lightening⚡️Our staff are now on site and are working hard to get services back on schedule. Once we have more information from the ground we will keep you updated.
— ScotRail (@ScotRail) July 24, 2019
#LNERUpdate Due to lightning damaging equipment between #Inverness and #Perth all lines are disrupted.
Train services running to and from these stations will be delayed by up to 45 minutes.
We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused to your journey today.
— London North Eastern Railway (@LNER) July 24, 2019
Elsewhere in Courier country a lightning strike sparked a blaze at a house in Markinch.
It comes as the Met Office issued another thunderstorm warning for Tayside and Fife effective from Thursday afternoon into Friday morning.
Forecaster have also said that Thursday will be the hottest day of the year.
