Freight transfer at narrow/standard gauge interchange points has long been a subject of interest to me, and has received relatively little attention in the railfan press. George W. Hilton, in his masterful American Narrow Gauge Railroads has pointed out that freight transfer was one of the most significant cost items for narrow gauges, and ultimately may have been responsible for the demise of many lines. Surprisingly, the railroads gave little thought to transfer, preferring to hire large numbers of cheap labor when it would have been fairly easy to mechanize much of the work. Even the large Colorado narrow gauges persisted in shovel transfer of bulk commodities at some points (Denver, Alamosa e.g.) until the end of operations when a simple gravity trestle could have saved countless man-hours of labor.
Robert C. Jones in Two Feet to the Quarries references a letter of H.E. Morrill in which he mentions having "been able to supply the quarries with coal [and] have hauled all the local freight", and a picture on p 82 of the same book shows a carload of coal being unloaded at one of the quarries (interestingly, only one car is shown when it ordinarily took three ng cars to handle one sg carload....assuming coal was purchased in carload lots one wonders where the rest of it is). In any event, inbound coal for the quarry boilers must have been a significant part of the Monson's traffic. For a time, the road had as many as fifteen employees, and at least some of these must have been employed as freight handlers. Yet the railroad never took the basic labor-saving step of constructing a transfer trestle for coal and polishing sand.
In re. Cliff Olson's point about demurrage charges, I seem to recall reading somewhere (maybe the Images of Rail book) that the Monson may have had a long-term lease on one of the B&A's gondolas so that it could be spotted at the junction for as-needed coal supply without incurring extra charges.
Roger, thanks for keeping this blog up. As a 2-footer fan living a continent away from Maine, I don't have much input to offer, but be assurred that I look foreward eagerly to your weekly postings.
Jeff Acock,
Adrian OR