LIRR Oyster Bay Branch: Route, Sea Cliff Station, Penn Station Transfers

The branch was built as a branch of the LIRR Main Line from Mineola, running north to Glen Head and later on to Glen Cove, Locust Valley and Oyster Bay. This page covers the route, the transfer at Jamaica, the station in Sea Cliff and the MTA’s temporary 2025 alternate-plan timetable, a past schedule. It sits in the buying guides for the North Shore, next to the school districts page.

Does the Oyster Bay Branch go straight to Penn Station?

West of Mineola, most trains originate or terminate at Jamaica, with some rush-hour trips ending at Hunterspoint Avenue, Long Island City or Penn Station.

Jamaica, the transfer hub

Passengers can transfer between trains at Jamaica on all LIRR lines except the Port Washington Branch. The MTA’s temporary 2025 alternate-plan timetable for the branch showed Jamaica transfers only for select trains. For every transfer option it pointed riders to the TrainTime app or a City Terminal Zone timetable. Use TrainTime for current schedules.

Penn Station and Grand Central Madison

Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest of the LIRR’s western terminals, serving almost 500 daily trains. Grand Central Madison sits under Grand Central Terminal, and service to it began on January 25, 2023.

The LIRR as a whole runs from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County. It has 126 stations and more than 700 miles of track. Average weekday ridership was 328,300 in the second quarter of 2026.

Route and train service

The Oyster Bay Branch is a rail line and service owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road. It splits from the Main Line just east of Mineola station and runs north and east to Oyster Bay. Track length is 14.68 miles. The branch carried 1,257,644 riders in 2025.

The electrified stretch from East Williston to Mineola was in place by June 1934. As of August 16, 2026, the branch is served by diesel-powered locomotive trains. The LIRR chose the branch for a battery-train test in April 2021 because of the short 13-mile trip between East Williston and Oyster Bay. In July 2022 the LIRR announced that retrofitting existing trains with battery power was unfeasible.

Mill Neck station closed in 1998. Some rush-hour trains run express through Mineola to ease congestion on track 3 of the Main Line.

Stations, distances and opening dates

Distances are in miles from Long Island City, with the year or date each station opened.

Roslyn and Glen Head both date to January 23, 1865, the opening of the branch’s first phase.

Sea Cliff station

Sea Cliff station is 26.7 miles from Long Island City. It stands on Sea Cliff Avenue and Glen Keith Road, between Glen Cove Avenue and Cedar Swamp Road, in the City of Glen Cove in Nassau County. The station has two high-level side platforms, each four cars long.

The Glen Cove Branch Rail Road built the station in 1867, and its station house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A major renovation followed in 1997. The Village of Sea Cliff sits 25 miles east of Manhattan, atop a 120-foot bluff. Housing, taxes and schools in the village are covered on the Sea Cliff town page; the next-door community is Glen Head.

LIRR parking stickers from the Town of Oyster Bay

The Oyster Bay Town Clerk offered two special Commuter Parking Sticker Weekends in 2026 for residents renewing LIRR parking stickers. They ran February 28 and March 1, and March 21 and 22, from 9am to 3pm at Town Hall North in Oyster Bay and Town Hall South in Massapequa. The notice, dated February 9, 2026, gave March 31 as the date the stickers expired.

As of that notice, stickers were also processed Monday through Friday, 9am to 4:45pm, at both Town Hall locations. The notice lists a copy of the current vehicle registration, New York State plates only, and proof of residency such as a utility bill, W-2 or paystub. Town Hall North is at 54 Audrey Avenue in Oyster Bay, and Town Hall South is at 977 Hicksville Road in Massapequa. The Town Clerk’s Office number is (516) 624-6332. Read the Town of Oyster Bay notice for the dated details.

The 2025 temporary alternate-plan timetable

The MTA’s Oyster Bay Branch alternate-plan schedule was titled “Effective When Announced” and covered weekdays, September 2 to November 9, 2025. It is a past temporary schedule, not the current commute timetable. The MTA timetable document is the source for every rule below, all of which applied to that past plan.

How the branch took shape

The first phase of the branch opened on January 23, 1865, built from Mineola north to Glen Head, its first terminus. On May 16, 1867, the line was extended from Glen Head to Glen Cove, now known as Glen Street. The line ended at Locust Valley for two decades, until a final four-mile extension reached Oyster Bay.

That extension opened on June 24, 1889, and regular passenger service began the next day with eight round trips daily to and from Long Island City. The branch was double-tracked to Roslyn, Glen Cove and Locust Valley in 1905, 1909 and 1911, respectively. Across the whole build-out, the branch opened in segments between 1865 and 1889.