What Drew outlined is correct. But the big issue was that the tube time was up. Even though it had very little time under steam after the restoration, it was under the old rules that required the boiler to be retubed every 5 years. So even though it looks ready to fire up (and could be without any problems) it needs to have the new 1472 day/15 year rebuild before it can be operated. Since the PLA steam crew was in the middle of the restoration of the Robert Dollar 3 the 2467 would have sat in the weather with no one working on it. By loaning it to the CSRM it put in inside a dry, climate controlled environment. Definately the best thing for the locomotive.

The city of Oakland does own the 2467 and the business car "Western". They are on permanent lease to the PLA. The other two cars that were in Harrison park went to Rio Vista - I doubt that Oakland retained ownership of them. It's too bad the PLA didn't get those two cars. They would have been a lot more useful than the Western which was totally trashed by copper thieves and a poor roof job while in Oakland.