489 was last used out of Chama on May 13, 1961. It may be an odd co-incidence, but it seems Alamosa preferred to keep the engines they had been using for along time in service as opposed to the engines that came down from Salida in the mid-1950's. Some like 482 and 489 ran until their last Salida flue jobs ran out and were set aside pretty early, but none of the Salida engines - except 483 ran past 1962.
480 - Salida engine 7/3/61
481 - Salida engine 3/28/61
482 - Salida engine 4/20/59
483 - Salida engine, but had a lot of work done to it after the 1958 wreck 1968
484 - Alamosa engine 7/30/68
485 - scrapped 1955
486 - Salida engine 11/4/61
487 - Alamosa engine 10/67
488 - Alamosa engine 12/66
489 - Salida Engine 5/13/61
489 sat in Alamosa and got robbed of various small parts and was officially removed from the D&RGW roster in 1963 along with 482, 490 (mostly scrapped then), 494 & 495. The other engines set aside but not retired - 480, 481, 486 continued to be carried on the roster as "stored", but had monthly reports submitted to the ICC/FRA until 1970. 481 became the spare-time shop queen in Alamosa. When the Grande sold out to the States, the engines stored serviceable (483, 484, 487, 488, 492) went for a higher price than the 482, 489, 494 and 495 which were considered parts sources.
In 1979-80, the C&TS was looking for another engine to put in service. Keeping in mind the limited capabilities of the Chama Shop, the boiler had to be solid, and the running gear had to have decent tires and crown brasses as the C&TS did not have a drop pit of unwheel an engine and do driver and crown brass work. 483 had been set aside needing tires and a rear flue sheet in addition new flues. 484 was about to be set aside for bad driver tires (ran through 1980), 487 and 488 were the only fairly solid engines out there. The only two candidates were 482 and 489. 489 won out because it's tires were a wee bit better and it had a few less missing parts. If the Grande had wanted to shop 489 in 1961, they would have needed to put tires on her as they wanted an overhauled engine to last it's tube time of 4 years. 489 only ran 4 seasons (or 2 years of running) before she needed to have new tires. Us tourist RR's like to space out the work over the years, the Grande wanted to do it all at once. From What I can figure, 487 was the last engine to get new tires in Alamosa in 1961.
489 went into service in early July, 1981.
