NESQUEHONING -- One community in Carbon County is railing for change at what they call a dangerous train crossing.
This comes after a crash last week sent a man to the hospital.
The driver of a Jeep was flown to a hospital after colliding with a train in Nesquehoning last Tuesday.
The wreck happened as the man pulled out of an industrial park where he works and was crossing the tracks to get onto Route 54.
Other workers at those plants want more safety features at the crossing.
“Definitely some warning lights,” said Jim Sherry who works in that industrial park. “People don't realize how much train traffic goes through here in the course of a day. We probably get about eight to 10 trains a day.”
“There should be at minimum the flashing lights when the train's coming. A gate would be nice,” said Bill Ulshafer, another employee.
Nesquehoning Council President David Hawk says the borough and KME, one of the businesses in the industrial park, put additional signs up last week. Now, the signs are flat on the ground.
Hawk says the rail company, Reading and Northern Railroad, took them down.
“The railroad informed us that the PUC dictates what type of warning devices are at a crossing and you can't even add anything to try to increase safety or whatever without their approval,” said Hawk.
Now, Hawk says borough officials and State Representative Doyle Heffley are trying to get the Public Utility Commission to come out and determine what can be done.
“They had signs there. You can see them laying on the ground. They tore them down,” said Sherry. “Now they had the stop sign there, and they had one that said, ‘Stop, Look, Listen’. I thought that was much safer.”
“We need to keep our employees safe also and other employees making deliveries to us or to Ametek,” said Ulshafer. “Everybody's got to be safe.”
The borough council president says the railroad is more than willing to allow a safety upgrade, but more than likely the borough will have to pay for it since it is the borough making the request.
As for the driver who got hit by the train, the borough council president says he continues to recover.