A little while ago, I wrote an extensive series of articles for Jay's (and Jason's)
Colorado Timetable newspaper. You can subscribe to this paper by checking out Jay's Narrow Gauge Dead Goat saloon. Below are the highlights of those articles that should answer your questions. If there is much interest, maybe I can ask Jay to run the series again, but its old news now so I have my doubts that he would.
"In 1946. The Pacific Portland Cement Company was selling their Plaster City Gypsum mine and narrow gauge railway in southern California to the United States Gypsum Company.
In anticipation of this purchase, the new owners began a search in 1945 for a new diesel engine to replace the aging, narrow gauge steam power that came with the purchase. On January 3, 1946 U.S. Gypsum received a proposal from Porter for a new diesel-electric locomotive. U.S. Gypsum place an order for the new locomotive at a cost of $69,855.
In 1979 U.S. Gypsum was in the market for newer and larger locomotives. Because of this, they considered their Porter Locomotive #1203 expendable and put it up for sale.
At this point a group of businessmen lead by Albert Horn, a lawyer from California obtained #1203 for around $25,000. Then they offered to loan it to the Huckleberry Railway so on November 24th the Porter Locomotive was loaded on an S.P. flatcar #85202 and shipped to her new home in Flint, Michigan.
For a many years to follow, #1203 continued to serve the needs of the Huckleberry Railway until one day (Aug 1990) when the locomotive threw a piston rod out through the side of the engine block. With no real need for #1203 anymore, the Huckleberry Ry. pushed it out behind their shop and forgot about it.
In February of 2005, the Colorado Historical Society (CHS) purchased the #1203 for use on the Georgetown Loop Railway. They also hired the Sumpter Valley to move it and rebuild it. So the SVRy sent their employees, Jerry Huck, Scott Hutton and myself to Flint, Michigan to pull the #1203 out of the weeds and move it to Oregon.
By October 2007, the rebuild was completed, and the 1203 was shipped to Colorado in May 2008. Ever since then, it has been the regular engine pulling the Loop's train.
