If you’re planning on taking the Long Island Railroad Tuesday, you should plan ahead, CBS 2′s Jay Dow reports.

“We’re canceling 33 out of 144 trains that we have run on a typical AM rush hour,” said Joe Calderone, LIRR spokesman.

That’s a 25-percent service reduction, a debilitating crisis that’s now affecting 10 of the railroad’s 11 branches.

The cause: a weather related cable fire that started Monday morning at a switching tower near Jamaica Station – one of the busiest transit hubs in the city.

LIRR spokesman Rich Mendelson discussed the problems with CBS 2 Tuesday:

“We are telling people that they should look at their regular schedule and also look at the cancellation list that we have on our website: http://www.mta.info/lirr/.  If your train is not on the cancellation list, then your train is scheduled to run as normal, although we are telling people to anticipate delays on the normal schedule. If your train is on the cancellation list, then we’re asking customers to just go down the schedule to the next train.”

Asked how long until the situation is resolved, Mendelson answered:

“That is a good question and it’s being looked at every single hour. There are repairs that have to be done to a major switching station. About 200 wires were damaged in a fire, and those wires control 155 switches, so it’s going to take some time. We’re taking it rush hour by rush hour. We even have a plan out for the PM rush hour today, so I guess you can surmise that we are not going to be back to normal even at the end of today, the PM rush.”

(Source: WCBSTV)