Remember that the Santa Fe collection was donated in April 1986, a time when SP+SF was working its way through regulatory approval, which both railroads believed would happen. I don't think that the Santa Fe could "force" the CSRM (or anyone else) to take its collection off of its hands...I'm sure the CSRM wanted it, but I'd be willing to bet that there was something of an understanding that after SP+SF happened, Sacramento Shops would have been closed within a relatively short time and the railroad probably intended to sell or donate some of the shop buildings to the CSRM. Santa Fe had its own shops and probably did not intend to continue SP's rebuilding programs at Sacramento.

A few months after all that equipment showed up in Sacramento, the ICC said NO to SP+SF. SP continued to use the shops for several more years, so that meant that the Santa Fe locomotives, as well as other equipment continued to be stored outside. SP had pretty good security in the shop area for a while, but after a while that ended. The CSRM SHOULD have made some effort secure the equipment better than they did...hiring a rent a cop to keep the equipment secure would have been a lot cheaper in the long run than letting it decay. Maybe putting some tarps over the equipment might have helped as well.

The CSRM bit off more than it turned out it could chew with the Santa Fe collection, but it didn't realize it at the time...it and ATSF thought the merger would go through and the future of the shops would have been a lot different. With the shops not available, Walt Gray spent years trying to get his MORT built south of Old Sac, but there was no money in the budget for it...the CSRM history building was started just before Prop 13, IIRC, when the state had more money. Face it, with today's financial climate, the CSRM would never be built these days.