STRANDED travellers had to be airlifted to safety from their snowbound train yesterday as blizzards brought chaos to many areas, leaving thousands of households without power.
The entire western side of Britain faced "whitemare" conditions, with temperatures plummeting as low as -7 Celsius in the mountains, and hundreds of roads blocked by drifts.
The worst hit area was Dumfries and Galloway in the south of Scotland, where the regional council declared a state of emergency after snowfalls trapped hundreds of motorists.
An RAF helicopter was called to rescue 16 passengers and three crew from their train stuck in a drift near Barrhill, 25 miles north of Stranraer, south west Scotland.
The helicopter, based in Northern Ireland, was at Prestwick Ayrshire, when it was called into service for the rescue mission - thought to be the first of its type in Scotland for 22 years - after railway workers sent to dig out the train could not get near it.
A naval helicopter from Prestwick was called out to pick up a Dumfries woman who went into labour with twins. It had earlier airlifted a pregnant woman from Stranraer and a four week baby in an incubator from Ayr to hospital.
Another RAF helicopter picked up three kidney patients from Cumbria and took them to hospital in Carlisle.
More than 1,000 motorists stranded for 22 hours in their ears on the snow blocked A74 and M74 near Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, were rescued yesterday, but then faced a night in emergency rest centres, unable to get farther.
Hundreds of children had the day off as schools closed and power supplies and transport links were disrupted across the country.
More than 15,000 households across south Wales shivered in the dark as electricians struggled to restore their power, and some suffered a further blow when their water supplies were cut.
South Wales Electricity said a team of 200 engineers was trying to restore power but three helicopters chartered to speed up the operation were grounded by poor visibility.
A fleet of four wheel drive vehicles ferried 50 handicapped children home from school after they spent more than 24 hours marooned by snowdrifts. The children had to spend the night at Mayfield special school, near Whitehaven, Cumbria, when huge drifts built up on Monday.
Motorways across most of the country were operating on reduced lanes, and hundreds of minor roads were blocked, said the RAC. Police in Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the Scottish borders appealed for motorists not to use their cars unless absolutely necessary. The M6 in Lancashire and Cheshire was passable only with extreme care.
"I've never known such wide areas of the country to have such problems with snow," said the RAC spokesman. The AA said that by 5 p.m. its patrols had attended almost 10,000 breakdowns.
The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant was closed all day after 2,000 workers were marooned at work by blocked roads.
A plant spokesman said the shutdown would continue until managers were satisfied that access on and off the site was acceptable".
Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports were closed briefly in the morning while snow was removed from runways, and officials at Birmingham airport suspended take offs.
The snow nearly wiped out yesterday's sporting schedule and made inroads into today's.
Only three of last night's 16 soccer matches survived.