Reading & Northern could begin relaying track along the Lehigh River within days, and the emergency repair of Route 209 between Jim Thorpe and Nesquehoning will cost an estimated $5 million, PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll said Tuesday.

Carroll and District 5 Executive Chris Kufro briefed reporters at the site of the Oct. 31 collapse, the first cost figure and the first rail time frame PennDOT has offered since the wall gave way.

“The work that’s been done thus far, mostly remedial work and the beginning of the stabilization, has us on track to allow the Reading & Northern to install rails and track sometime in the next few days,” Carroll said. “Then the railroad would determine when they want to resume service, passenger rail service for the region here in Carbon County.”

The cost estimate is preliminary.

“We estimate the cost of this project somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million, and that is a rough estimate for the moment,” Carroll said. “It doesn’t count what we may find with the repairs to the remaining part of the wall, both east and west.”

The six-to-eight-week estimate to reopen the highway has not changed.

“I said on Sunday when I was here, and PennDOT reported, that we would attempt to reopen 209 in six to eight weeks, with the full knowledge that we are going to work like heck to get this road opened even sooner than that,” Carroll said.

Asked what caused the slide during a dry stretch of fall, Carroll pointed to groundwater rather than rainfall.

“We hadn’t had much rain here for the two weeks prior to the slide. So our best estimate is that Mother Nature was a culprit here,” he said. “The natural water in the earth and in the side of the mountain is what resulted in a weakening of the wall. And then Saturday is the day it decided to fail.”

The wall was more than a century old. Its failure sent 600 cubic yards of rock and fill down the slope toward the river and the railroad, undermining the highway above and closing the rail line at the toe of the slope. PennDOT’s Carbon County maintenance forces shut the road between Route 903 and Route 93 quickly, working with county emergency responders.

“I am personally thankful that no one was hurt or killed as a result of the slide occurring on a very busy Saturday in the fall here in Carbon County,” Carroll said.

Kufro walked through the engineering. Crews first had to secure the two rock walls flanking the slide, covering the face of each with steel mesh, spraying shotcrete over it and driving rock anchors through into the bedrock. A net at the bottom of the slope let crews clear the debris covering the tracks.

That work is not finished. Once it is, contractors will pour a concrete footing, anchor it into bedrock and build the new wall on top.

“From there we’re going to build a geosynthetic wall up, and that geosynthetic wall is going to be also tied back and locked into the bedrock of the mountain,” Kufro said. “It’s going to be safe when we’re done. It’s going to be much better than it was before.”

Consulting engineer Gannett Fleming is reviewing the surviving wall on both sides of the failure, and crews have already found a second trouble spot.

“At this point, we’ve identified another section of wall to the east. It’s a concrete section that we’re going to do some remediation repairs,” Kufro said.

That section will get the same treatment — mesh, shotcrete and anchors. Crews have also drilled weep holes to relieve water pressure behind the wall.

Carroll said the additional repairs will run alongside the main job.

“Whatever other areas that we find that are weak that need repair, that will occur during this six-to-eight-week period, so it won’t result in any further extensions at this point,” he said. “If we were to uncover something else during our examination, that may change the answer, may result in a single lane closure.”

J.D. Eckman Inc. is the prime contractor. Crews mobilized the night of the collapse and were working by Sunday morning, Kufro said. Rock and debris removal was completed over the weekend, according to PennDOT.

State Sen. David Argall thanked the department for its response.

“I’m a neighbor, 10 minutes away,” Argall said. “We drive this road all the time. Never really think about what’s underneath it. This work is of critical importance to the economy here, to the visitors. With the number of people coming in and out of Jim Thorpe at this time of year, I don’t have to tell any of the local folks how important this is.”

State Rep. Doyle Heffley said in a statement, “I appreciate PennDOT continuing its work to repair and reopen U.S. 209. ... While the project is still expected to take six to eight weeks, I urge drivers to remain patient and continue following posted detours while crews work to restore safe travel along this important corridor.”

Route 209 remains closed between Route 903 and Route 93. The posted detour uses Route 443, Route 309 and U.S. 209.