A MAJOR city centre power cut brought chaos to Glasgow's Subway and hit almost 200 shops, pubs and offices.

The blackout, which affected premises at the top of Buchanan Street, led to the closure of one of the city's busiest underground stations as contractors battled to repair a fault in the cable supply.

Most homes and businesses had power restored within 40 minutes. However, eight properties, including Buchanan Street Subway, were left without power for more than 12 hours.

The station was closed at around 1pm yesterday and remained shut during last night's rush hour.

Services returned to normal this morning following tests.

Subway director David Wallace said today: "We have to apologise to our passengers for the disruption, but it has been caused by power failures which were beyond our control."

To add to the disruption, most of the services on the Outer Circle were closed on health and safety grounds at 4pm because of flooding after the power cut affected the network's water pumping system.

A restricted service ran between Hillhead and Govan, and shuttle buses were laid on to try to cope with the influx of commuters.

It's understood ScottishPower had to wait for specialist contractors authorised by Glasgow City Council to lift Caithness glass slabs and allow workmen to access a section of cable.

A spokeswoman for the ScottishPower said: "We had a major fault in an underground cable around the Buchanan Street area of the city at lunchtime.

"Roughly 190 customers were affected at the top end of the street and Dundas Street, but the vast majority had supplies restored within the hour.

"We would obviously like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank customers for their patience."

A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport said engineers had worked through the night, and a full service would run today.