Your "cron" job on Alpha
/alpha/script_path/fileXfr.pl > /tmp/fileXfr.log 2>$1

produced the following output:

open3: exec of scp -pqB /alpha/absolute/path/file1.cfg guestUser@beta.kanja.gc.au:/beta/path/router/files/file1.cfg
failed at /usr/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/Net/SCP.pm line 93