Second night of storm power cuts for some households

Engineers have been working to restore supplies cut off by Thursday's storms

Some homes in Scotland remained without electricity for a second night as engineers worked to restore supplies after Thursday's storms.

Scottish Hydro said several hundred customers were still without power on Saturday morning.

About 300 Scottish Power customers remained off supply but were expected to be reconnected later in the day.

At the height of the storms, the entire Scottish rail network was closed and power was cut to 130,000 properties.

Scottish Hydro said the remaining customers without power were in small pockets in rural areas across Argyll, Perthshire, Stirlingshire, the Highlands and Shetland.

The company, which has reconnected almost 80,000 customers since the storms began, said its engineers were "out again at first light" with the aim of restoring electricity to all remaining households on Saturday.

A spokesman added: "We are working closely with community and resilience groups in the affected areas and welfare vans have been deployed to provide hot water, charge mobile phones and provide hot food and drinks."

Scottish Power said on Friday 650 engineers, 150 of them brought in from England, were working to reconnect supplies.

The worst-affected areas included Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders. Faults were also reported across Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and the Lothians.

The biggest problem has come from uprooted trees and other debris which has been blown on to overhead power lines, causing damage and bringing down the lines in some areas.

A Scottish Power spokesman said about 300 customers remained without power overnight on Friday. He added: "All customers will be reconnected today."