The painstaking operation to fully re-open the West Coast Mainline continued today as engineers remove the nine carriages following the fatal Cumbria derailment.

Forensic experts will begin probing the carriages for the first time since the accident last Friday.

All nine carriages came off the tracks when the 5.15pm London Euston to Glasgow train was derailed shortly after 8pm.

The operation on the major route between Glasgow and london began yesterday evening after two temporary roads were built to allow access to the site at Grayrigg, near Kendal.

Two cranes, one weighing 1000 tonnes and the other 800 tonnes, are carrying out the work. The 1000-tonne crane, which will be used to lift the back six carriages of the train, arrived at the crash site in sections and will be built there.

The first of the 50-tonne carriages will be driven from the derailment site on the back of a low loader lorry to a railway depot in the Midlands.

Because of the way the carriages landed when they careered off the track, it had been unsafe for anyone to enter them until now.

One passenger, Margaret "Peggy" Masson, 84, of Cardonald, Glasgow, died and 22 others were injured in the accident, which has been blamed on a faulty set of points.