LIRR on or close to schedule after broken rail, signal trouble delays

A broken rail near Cold Spring Harbor that delayed the morning commute on the Huntington/Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma and Oyster Bay branches has been repaired, the Long Island Rail Road said Monday morning in an updated advisory.  Those trains are now operating on or close to schedule.

And although signal trouble has been addressed near West Hempstead that had been causing delays, residual delays of 5 to 10 minutes are possible.

The broken rail caused two cancellations, an advisory said.

LIRR spokesman Aaron Donovan said that the cause of the broken rail is under investigation but that broken rails are often correlated with bad weather. 

Earlier in the morning, there had been delays of 5 to 10 minutes caused by signal trouble along the Babylon Branch near Amityville in both directions, but as of about 7:30 a.m., service was back to normal, an updated advisory said. 

Trains are operating on a regular weekday schedule on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but fares are off-peak all day, according to an advisory.