TRAIN services to and from Helensburgh were disrupted on Thursday afternoon because of a signalling failure.

ScotRail announced that trains on the Helensburgh-Edinburgh route were not operating west of Garscadden.

Ticket acceptance was arranged on First Glasgow's bus service between Helensburgh and Glasgow.

In a statement the company said: We are dealing with a signalling issue between Craigendorian [sic] and Helensburgh.

"Our staff are now on site and are working hard to rectify this fault. Once we have more information from the ground we will keep you updated. Check back here regularly for updates."

The fault was discovered at around 3pm and disruption continued until around 4.45pm.

It's the eighth time this year that failures with either points or signalling systems at Craigendoran have disrupted trains on the Helensburgh Central route.

On the previous occasion, on March 29, the company blamed the repeated disruption on the failure of an 'axle counter' – a safety mechanism which monitors a train's progress along a particular section of track – and said its engineers had altered the design of the equipment "to help reduce the chance of it failing again in future".

* Meanwhile, train services on the West Highland Line via Helensburgh Upper returned to normal on Wednesday evening after the discovery of a sink-hole beneath the track between Arrochar and Tarbet and Ardlui stations.

And Helensburgh's trains weren't the only means of public transport disrupted on Thursday afternoon: Clydelink, the operators of the Kilcreggan ferry, suspended the village's link with Gourock shortly after midday, blaming adverse weather conditions in the Firth of Clyde.