GIRARDVILLE - You are already driving downhill when the S-curve appears suddenly. Then you realize there is a railroad crossing as well. If it is raining or icy, you may regret coming this way.
Nevertheless, Powder Mill Road, Flicker Hill Road, or just "The Flicker," the short stretch of road just east of Girardville, is not as bad as it looks, having a good safety record.
"We've never had anything as far as train accidents with any vehicles," Butler Township police Chief Edward Tarantelli said recently. "Trains use the track occasionally but I'm not aware of any regular schedule. We've never had any problems there."
The Flicker is a double-S curve section of state Route 4030 in Butler Township between the boroughs of Gilberton and Girardville and is about three-tenths of a mile long. The state route begins at the St. Nicholas Bridge in Mahanoy Township where state Route 54 turns toward Shenandoah and ends at the "Y" intersection between Girardville and Ashland, where it meets with Route 54 again.
As the Reading & Northern railroad, based in Port Clinton, still uses the tracks, the tricky course will remain in place.
Tarantelli said winter weather can cause problems for drivers due to the curves and the incline.
"It gets slick and it's not a primary road," said Tarantelli, referring to being salted and plowed by PennDOT as often as the major highways in county, such as routes 61 or 309.
"When you're coming off that straightaway from Gilberton toward Girardville and all of a sudden you're in those S-curves, it sometimes gets the people off guard," said Tarantelli. "And if you're going the opposite way, you're dealing with the hill and it depends on how icy it is."
Tarantelli said that while crashes occur on occasion, they're not frequent. In fact, Tarantelli checked his records and noted that there were no vehicle crashes in 2011.
Why must there be a railroad there? In fact, the line has been in place for nearly two hundred years. Called the Shenandoah Junction, the spur begins in Gilberton and continues through the West Mahanoy Township villages of Lost Creek and William Penn into Shenandoah. In recent years, two rail crossings toward Shenandoah have been paved over, reducing the track length into the Connorton area of Butler Township. The spur comes off the rail line from the Mahanoy Tunnel that heads into Girardville, Ashland, Gordon and into Northumberland County.
Girardville businessman Robert Krick is a local historian and had some information about the area in question.
"The reason it's called 'Powder Mill Road' is because there were powder mills right along there," Krick said. "There was a powder mill along the Mahanoy Creek in that area. There was also one on the Shenandoah Creek side."
Powder mills made gunpowder and other explosives. Schuylkill County once had many small explosive manufactuers.
"I don't know when they closed, but I've seen them on maps of the 1880s," Krick said.
Krick said the history of the rail goes back almost two centuries.
"Initially, the Pottsville-Danville railroad was the first railroad into (Girardville), and that's back in the 1830s," said Krick. "That was one of the earliest railroads in the country and it ran basically where the railroad is now, through it's a little bit higher."
He added, "The current rail goes to about where the Packer 5 colliery was, where now the Reading Anthracite breaker is located. There is a train or two a week that uses the track to go to the breaker."