Interesting. Hilton was a pretty good researcher but didn't always get it right. I do recall hearing something about the gravity transfer at the Gramps facility, But had always assumed it was a private affair, just for unloading oil from tank cars.

The subject of freight transfer from standard to narrow gauge or vice versa has always intrigued me. The cost, delay and damage that occurred is said to be the one facter that really killed off the narrow gauges, rather than any inherent flaw in their design. Strangely enough, very few narrow gauge roads made any real effort to deal with the problem. The Colorado Central used shovel transfer of ore until the end of operations - what a chore that must have been! Gravity alone could have made it so much simpler, although it would have meant equiping their gons with bottom-dump capability. The Sandy River & Rangely lakes employed dozens of men at their lumber transload, when some sort of overhead gantry could have done it with only a few. The Milwaukee Road, which owned the Belleview & Cascade estimated that transfer costs at Belleview - mostly of agricultural products - ate up nearly the entire operating profit of the line, but applied to abandon, rather than upgrade.

In almost all cases, mechanization and a little ingenuity could have greatly alleviated the problem. Gravity transfer trestles for bulk products, gantries, containerization or palletization......overhead cranes, rolling "pallet" jacks, even primitave lift trucks were available for most of the 20th century.

A few narrow-gauges did work on the problem; the D&RGW installed a barrel transfer at Salida, the Eureka & palisade had gravity bins, the ET&WNC used a dual-gauge gravity transfer trestle, and even had TOFC capability, The EBT used both a gantry and two-way transfer trestle and the WP&Y containerized nearly all it's freight. But for the most part the narrow-gauges showed very little ingenuity or even interest in solving their most vexing problem.

A fascinating subject, one that I'd love to explore further.
Jeff