M74 reopens after lorries blown over during Storm Bram

The main motorway linking Scotland and England has fully reopened after several lorries were blown over during Storm Bram.

The M74 was shut between junctions 12 and 13 near Abington in South Lanarkshire for much of the night when high winds toppled HGVs on Tuesday evening.

The northbound carriageway was cleared early on Wednesday and Police Scotland said southbound traffic was also now running after a vehicle recovery operation. No-one was injured.

The second named storm of the season also caused problems for rail travellers with fallen trees and damaged overhead cables, and more than 1,000 properties lost power.

Network Rail said repairs had been made to a damaged overhead cable on the Glasgow-Neilston route and the line would reopen once an affected train had been returned to the depot.

One train was struck by a trampoline that blew onto the railway line south of Perth on Tuesday evening, but it was able to continue its journey.

Fallen trees and branches had to be removed from a number of lines, but it said almost all of the rail network was open.

West Highland line services between Glasgow, Oban and Mallaig and services between Inverness and Kyle of Lochalsh were facing the biggest disruption.

Some flights into Glasgow and Edinburgh were cancelled or diverted during the storm.

Football fans were left disappointed when Tuesday's s KDM Evolution Trophy match between Queen of the South and Dunfermline Athletic was postponed 10 minutes after the match was due to kick off.

Another five matches were also called off due to high winds and heavy rain.

Roads agency Bear Scotland said its teams worked through the night clearing fallen trees that had affected the A9 at Cambusavie and the A84 south of Loch Lubnaig.

Storm Bram, named by the Irish weather service Met Éireann, prompted an amber alert for much of north west Scotland.

Lesser yellow alerts were issued for the rest of the country, and these will remain in place north of the central belt through much of the day.

In the Highlands five schools including Gairloch High are closed and others opened later than usual.

At the height of the storm, gusts of 76mph were recorded on South Uist in the Western Isles with similar speeds also felt in Lanarkshire and Dumfries and Galloway.

Some homes and businesses were left without power with SSEN's website showing about 1,000 customers affected by outages in various areas north of the central belt.

SP Energy Networks said its engineers were also working to restore supplies to hundreds of customers in the south of the country.

Large parts of Teviotdale, Tweeddale, the Leader Valley and as far north as Heriot have been affected while there were also outages around Moffat, Lockerbie, Canonbie and Kirkcudbright.

A spokesperson said: "We have fewer than 400 customers without power this morning across the South of Scotland with those numbers coming down and are working hard to restore those affected as quickly and as safely as possible."

The storm was accompanied by heavy rain in many areas, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has 17 flood warnings in force - mainly in Tayside and Orkney - as well as a number of flood alerts.