Rail commuters face weeks of extensive disruption to services in central Scotland following a landslip at a tunnel near Larbert.

It has blocked both tracks of the main line linking Glasgow Queen Street Station with the north.

Railtrack said there would be disruption for at least two weeks.

Trains from Glasgow to Stirling, Dunblane, Perth and Aberdeen were being diverted adding half an hour to journey times.

The Edinburgh to Glasgow service is running as normal - but scheduled engineering work will add 10 minutes to journeys.

Railtrack said landslips had tripled

More than 70 services were cancelled and a further 200 faced delays, after tonnes of rubble slipped on to the track at Carmuirs, north-west of Falkirk.

The landslip was yards from where the recently opened Falkirk Wheel connects the Forth & Clyde and Union canals.

Railtrack's Jim Bellingham said: "The earth and the mud are actually covering the entrance to the tunnel. The reason for this is ground saturation - the ground is saturated with water.

"This is primarily caused by climactic changes. This year we have experienced a three-fold increase in the number of landslips, albeit this is a particularly nasty one."

ScotRail's commercial director Mike Price said more delays were inevitable, particularly for commuters returning to work on Monday.

Emergency timetable

He said: "Passengers have largely accepted that the problem has been out of ScotRail's hands and we thank them most sincerely for their patience.

"Unfortunately, there's more disruption to come - particularly on Monday and for the rest of the week.

"We've been working very hard with Railtrack to produce an emergency timetable that provides the maximum number of trains for morning and evening peak services.

"We will get commuters to and from Glasgow. But there's no getting away from the fact that delays are inevitable as diverted trains queue for access to Queen Street station."

British Waterways said it had drained a section of the canal which runs across the top of an affected rail tunnel.

Falkirk Wheel: Landslip was only yards away

However, it said there was no evidence to suggest the operation of the canal or the Wheel had contributed to the land slip.

Jim Stirling, director of British Waterways in Scotland, said: "We are providing every assistance to Railtrack as they continue their work to remove the obstruction on the rail line following the land slip.

"We do not believe, and there is no evidence to suggest, that the land slip is in any way connected to the Forth and Clyde canal or the Falkirk Wheel.

"We have drained a section of the waterway to facilitate repairs by Railtrack to their rail structure."