A plan to win federal approval for trains to travel through North Lawrence without sounding their horns during the evening and early morning is chugging along.

Jonathan Douglass, a City Hall staff member working on the plan, said he expects to have an official request off in about two weeks to the Federal Railroad Administration asking for a train horn quiet zone.

The project is moving forward after representatives of the city, North Lawrence, the school district and the railroad met Wednesday and agreed the plan was workable, especially because it would only create a quiet zone from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“I just don’t want them not honking their horn when I have buses running,” said Wayne Zachary, a manager with Laidlaw Education Services, the provider of bus service for the Lawrence school district. “But we could live with 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.”

Whether federal officials will approve the request is unknown. Howard Gillespie, a director with the Federal Railroad Administration who attended Wednesday’s meeting, gave no indication whether the department was supportive of the request. He also said it was difficult to predict a timeline for the agency to make a decision, which will be based on whether the railroad crossings in the area will remain safe for motorists and pedestrians.

A train passes through North Lawrence Wednesday near the intersection of Seventh and Maple streets. The city is trying to get the Federal Railroad Administration to approve an overnight quiet zone for North Lawrence, which would mean trains would not sound their horns as they passed through.

The project would include closing a pedestrian railroad crossing on Fourth Street and the construction of medians where the railroad intersects with Third and Seventh streets. The medians are designed to prevent motorists from driving around railroad crossing gates.

“I see people going around those gates on a daily basis,” said Randy Ortiz, a North Lawrence heating and air conditioning contractor. “It is just a matter of time before an accident happens. Even if we don’t have a quiet zone, the median would help a lot.”

The medians, though, are expected to cost $50,000 to construct. That money has not been included in the city’s 2007 budget, which means city commissioners would have to figure out how to fund the project if it were approved.

The project also has brought up questions about whether the Union Pacific Railroad has any plans to move its main line to a new location out of North Lawrence to near the Lawrence Municipal Airport. That idea had been briefly discussed by Union Pacific leaders in 2000, but a spokesman for the company said the plans for the expensive track relocation project never materialized.

“I haven’t heard anything at all about that since 2000,” said Mark Davis, Union Pacific spokesman.