The return of the semaphore signal atop the long-closed train depot in Contoocook this week produced one surprising memory: A kiss from 70 years ago.

“When I was a young girl riding up north to Stark where my mother was born, my parents would always take us to a covered bridge and they said: This is a kissing bridge. All covered bridges, railroad bridges. are kissing bridges,” said Linda Ogden, 75, during Monday ceremonies at the Contoocook Railroad Museum when a crane raised the refurbished signal atop the former train depot.

The signal was used when the trains of the Concord and Claremont Railway, later Boston & Maine, headed through town connecting to Hillsborough or to Warner, including a jaunt over the nearby covered bridge over the Contoocook River, which today is the world’s oldest surviving covered railroad bridge.

Trains stopped coming a half-century ago – 1955 saw the last passenger service and 1962 the last freight service – and the rails have long been removed. But the depot remains as home to the Contoocook Railroad Museum. The non-profit Contoocook Riverway Association owns it and is preserving the area, including a 1907 vintage passenger coach. Monday’s return of the semaphore signal, refurbished by Fred Nystrom, was the latest step in their continuing efforts.

The semaphore or signal mast sits atop the depot, holding a large wood timber that could be raised or lowered, carrying a lantern at night, to let approaching trains know the status of the line or giving instructions such as whether to stop, vital in the era before mobile phones.

Now, about that kiss.

“Before they tore down the beautiful Concord station, we took a class trip, 5- and 6-year-olds, from the Concord station all the way up through this bridge to Lake Sanofi for an outing – with our chaperons and everything. ... It was exciting. And I never forgot going through that bridge,” said Ogden. “I was next to Jeff Evans and I said we have to kiss and we did in that bridge.

“We were so excited. When we got back to the Concord station we ran up to our parents and said, ‘We had our kiss in the bridge!’ The parents each took our hands. My parents took me one way, his parents took him another way and it was never spoken of again.”