The Chestnut Ridge Railway, winding east from its home borough of Palmerton, traversed an entirely rural route eleven miles along the base of Blue Mountain until it reached the “metropolis” of Kunkletown. Originally funded by stockholders including the likes of J. P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor, the investors planned both a plant to manufacture white bricks and a mountainside resort in Kunkletown, which would provide freight and passenger traffic on the line. The brick factory failed after three years, and the resort never materialized. By the 1970’s the largest business in Kunkletown was a huge turkey farm, and the railroad had embargoed service past Little Gap, where there a sand quarry provided on-line business. Not far from the loading facility, I believe at the Lower Smith Gap Road crossing, was this crossing bell. The Chestnut Ridge was not prosperous, and didn’t replace what wasn’t broken. This bell was already quite unusual by 1975, and disappeared within a few years,
