Work is progressing to make a railroad crossing in Jim Thorpe safer, Carbon County officials said.

On Thursday, Commissioners’ Chairman Michael Sofranko said Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad is installing lights and safety bars at the entrance to the Carbon County parking lot.

“Work is steadily progressing,” Sofranko said. “I want would like to personally thank the railroad because I’ve noticed they are doing the work in the evenings.”

He said that doing the project at night has helped keep traffic backups to a minimum and will be a good thing to keep the community safe once it is completed.

In June, the commissioners announced that the railroad would install signal lights that would alert people of an approaching train, as well as keep people off the tracks as the train nears the crossing when it is either coming into or leaving the Jim Thorpe station.

At that meeting, Sofranko said that work will include signal lights “that will be set up that as the trains are 1,000 feet out, that will set off the signal lights. Then, where the pedestrians are crossing, there’s two areas they’re going to be putting in lift gates (at the crosswalks).”

Gates over the entrance of the lot to prevent vehicles from crossing are not planned.

Currently, when a train approaches the crossing, county parking attendants stop traffic on either side of the crossing to prevent vehicles from attempting to cross in front of the train.

In addition, the railroad will also be moving two telephones poles that are obsolete, move county-owned service farther away, moving wiring underground, and relocating a kiosk that is in the middle of a walkway.