The Monson Railroad was a 2 ft (610 mm) gauge narrow gauge railroad which operated between Monson Junction on the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and Monson, Maine. The primary purpose of this railroad was to serve several slate mines and finishing houses in Monson. According to the Scientific American of May 17, 1890, it was the smallest railroad in the United States.
Equipment was never modernized, and the railroad used antique stub switches and link-and-pin couplers to the end of operations in 1943. The line was the last commercial carrier in the United States to use such couplers or to run on a two-foot narrow gauge.
Read more about Monson Railroad: Construction, Early Common Carrier Operations, Monson Slate Company Ownership, Decline of Service, Locomotives, Rolling Stock
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“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
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