LIGHTNING left thousands of people in North Yorkshire without electricity today, and disrupted train services on the East Coast Main Line.

A Network Rail spokeswoman said a lightning bolt struck the line between Darlington and Aycliffe at about 5am, shorting signals and power.

Arriva Trains Northern said one service had to be diverted.

GNER spokesman Phil Bustard said two services had been delayed.

Power was restored to the line at about 7.30am.

Elsewhere, around 200 homes in the Malton, Pickering and Whitby area were left without power as engineers worked to restore the supply. A spokeswoman for distribution company NEDL said that the lightning storm had covered a huge area, from just south of York as far as Berwick-on-Tweed.

"Around 25,000 customers lost power although now 20,000 of those are back on supply," she said. The lightning is thought to have hit overhead power lines, she added.

Meanwhile, residents in Harrogate were suffering further problems with their water supply today. Thousands of residents in the town centre, High Harrogate and the Coppice area lost their supply, following technical problems in supplying water from a service reservoir at the Harlow Hill treatment works. Yorkshire Water said the disruptions were set to continue until this evening while engineering work was taking place. Over 100 engineers were working on the problem. Emergency water supplies were immediately deployed to hospitals, nursing homes and to other vulnerable sections of the community. Water bowsers were also being made available.

A Yorkshire Water spokeswoman said: "We apologise to customers for inconvenience caused which was due to improvement works being undertaken at our Harlow Hill site."

Updated: 14:07 Tuesday, June 17, 2003