I ran into this mystery the other day.... Has anyone ever heard of a Class 1 cutting out one center plate, maybe so it couldn't be run, before selling a car off to a private owner? I wouldn't normally think so and I've never heard of that before but I've seen weirder stuff happen.

I've seen Amtrak require that the sideframes and axles of an AEM-7 be cut, to prevent any likelihood of even the parts being re-used for rail purposes... so, yes.

The Alaska RR drained the oil from a diesel and ran it until it locked up before donating it.

They aught to be prosecuted for Mechanical Abuse.

There's worse. Common practice during the first Obama administration was to pour sodium silicate (remember 'water glass'?) or fine grinding compound into the crankcase and run the engine until it "stopped" -0- at which point none of the rotating or sliding components could be adaptively reused'.

A few holes in the crankcase, or spun bearings, pale by contrast.

Which locomotive?

Was that one locomotives, or cash for clunkers?

I still don't see the point of damaging components that could be reused elsewhere. If anything , that makes ecological sense, as it negates price of production.

And why wreck something if you are donating it for display, anyway?

It's not rail, but as an interesting sidenote the same nonsense has happened with Canadian fleets operating on the Great Lakes.

In the early 2000's, Canada Steamship lines retired the Teakglen. They sold her to a grain elevator for use as a storage barge. Fast forward to 2005 and there suddenly weren't enough hulls on the Lakes since business was booming. A new Canadian fleet was formed called Voyageur. They bought her, had her drydocked and refurbished, and brought her out as the Maritime Trader in competition with her former owners.

They also bought Algoma Central's Algocen that had been sold around the same time be used as a spoils storage barge in New Jersey. They did similarly with her, bringing her back out as the J.W. Shelley in the Seaway trade that these two fleets considered their own turf.

Neither fleet was very happy about this and they started crippling the engine rooms of their retired lakers before selling them for scrap. For instance with a steamer, they'd send a quantity of sand into the steam turbine while operating to cause a lot of expensive to repair damage. The diesels were ran without oil.

The reason given for the Alaska RR damaging the loco before donation was that they never wanted it used again. Management did not want the subject of excursions or the like to come up.

Getting WAY off the point of the OP, but......

The entire point of the "cash for clunkers" or any other emissions-reduction program is to PERMANENTLY remove a "polluting" engine (not locomotive or car, its engine) from cranking out more emissions.

One has to remember that the emissions from ONE vintage carburetted engine of old (say a 1950s-1970s Ford, Chevy, etc.) can equal the pollution from 50 to 100 cars of the 2010s-2020s. The sick joke is that the emissions from modern cars are SO clean that someone attempting carbon-monoxide suicide by running a hose from the tailpipe to the car window with a modern car might just die of boredom first....... (Indeed, I've read reports of failed attempts where there was not enough CO to do in the intended self-victim.)

Initially, there WERE some scandals where junkyards got cars intended for scrapping under the "clunkers" program and flipped engine parts to hot-rodders and race car drivers. Thus, the later mandates to destroy the engines themselves.

Now, I will fully agree that the junkyard-scavenging tightwad in me is aghast at the thought of destroying usable Alco, EMD, GE, etc prime movers and their parts. But show me who's willing to pay that kind of money for them........