Open crossings: A history of major accidents

In the last five years, Network Rail has taken action to instal 21 barrier systems at open crossings across Scotland, with Delny and Dingwall the last to be finished.

But prior to this there were several other major accidents at open level crossings in the Highlands.

Angus MacKay and his wife Margaret, both 81, and Mr MacKay’s brother Donnie, 66, from Latheron, were killed when their car was struck by a train at Halkirk in 2009.

Seven years earlier, a young pregnant woman, Sarah Jappy, of Halkirk, spent months in a coma after suffering multiple injuries in a crash at the same site, before giving birth to a healthy baby girl.

In the same year as the tragic 2007 crash at Delny, railway worker Graeme Macmillan, 48, was seriously injured at Bunchrew level crossing when his car was hit by a train.

And in April 2012, Tain oil worker John Kidd said he and his wife Angela, both 38, and their four children, came within yards of being crushed to death after a fault on the Delny crossing put them in the path of an oncoming train.