FOR her family, it was a poignant moment to reflect as a memorial service was held for Moira Anderson.

It is 60 years since the Coatbridge schoolgirl vanished on a cold, snowy day - just like yesterday.

Moira's cousin, sister and other family members gathered with Sandra Brown, founder of the Moira Anderson Foundation, to remember her.

Cousin Janet Fryer said: "What brought it home to me most today was the weather. It was a dreadful day that day and it was a dreadful day today.

"I felt it was very well done and it wasn't sad, it was a chance to remember - but it brought it all back.

"I can't believe it's been 60 years because it seems no time at all."

Yesterday's event took place at the Airdrie headquarters of the Moira Anderson Foundation, set up by Ms Brown, whose father, Alexander Gartshore, was named in 2014 as Moira’s likely killer by then Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC.

Moira went missing after popping out on an errand for her grandmother.

The mystery has haunted Coatbridge since and her family and Ms Brown have never stopped pushing to find the truth.

A final effort to find Moira, who was 11 when she went missing, is to begin next month on a 100-metre stretch of the Monkland Canal at Carnbroe.

Police are working with experts from the universities of Aberdeen, Belfast and Birmingham, alongside specialists from the Home Office.

Officers searching for Moira in 1957 did not follow up with a witness who saw a man emerging from waste-ground opposite his home, carrying a sack towards the canal the morning after Moira disappeared.

The witness reported the sighting to police and his description was a match for Gartshore, then 36, who had been driving the bus on which Moira was last seen on the afternoon of February 23, 1957.

He died in a Leeds hospital aged 85 on April 1, 2006, never having been charged in relation to Moira’s disappearance.

In 2013 specialist forensic teams exhumed the family burial plot of Sinclair Upton at Old Monkland Cemetery in Coatbridge.

Mr Upton, who died in 1957, was an acquaintance of Gartshore, a convicted child rapist, and it was thought Moira's remains may have been buried with him.

Despite the disappointment, the forensic search has continued with the new investigation in Carnbroe.

Mrs Fryer added: "This is something you live your life with but today brought a kind of closure on it.

"Hopefully they find something during this new search.

"It is wonderful that after all this time there are still people out there trying to find her."