I was looking at the web site for the CBHS and found this to be rather intersting...maybe, did I read this correctly?

Engine 819 was built by the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company (Cotton Belt Route) at it's Pine Bluff, Arkansas shops in 1942, the mighty locomotive ruled the rails for a dozen years before being replaced by diesel locomotives. The engine was donated to the city in 1955 and "Old 819" reposed in Oakland Park until 1983 when Cotton Belt brought it out of the park for restoration by the Cotton Belt Historical Society, Inc. The engine's home is now in the Cotton Belt Historical Museum which is located at the home of its birth, at the Old Cotton Belt Shops. The museum is open to the public Monday through Saturday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. The price of admission is a Donation to the CBRHS. It's first trips were made in 1986 to Fordyce, Arkansas and Little Rock, Arkansas and made many trips since but these trips have now been suspended by the Union Pacific (The present owners). The Big Engine is capable of pulling 100 freight cars with ease and burns about 15 gallons of oil per mile. The cost of this engine in 1942 was $143,607 which is the equivalent now to over $2,000,000. The cost to rebuild the engine was $140,000

So the questions are, did the cotton belt (as in the railroad) reclaim ownership and pull the engine out of the park? Does the UP now own the locomotive or the rail line they had been running trips on?

I think the signage is incorrect...I think the CBHS got her out of the park and rebuilt her the first time, and I believe she is currently undergoing her 15 year inspection. At the moment she currently is landlocked by the UP, but getting out on the road is not something that is impossible, but difficult.

I'm about 99% sure the Cotton Belt never had any ownership in the engine in the restoration era - they just removed it from the park and delivered it to the restoration site in Little Rock. By then Cotton Belt was part of SP, right?

The "many trips" verbiage is a little bit of hyperbole as well - SP was only occasionally receptive to excursions before it was folded into UP, and had a total steam ban by the mid-1990s as I recall. I think this group got a little ahead of itself by not answering the where-will-we-run-it question before restoring the engine (and was not alone in that regard). If/when they restore it again they will have the same problem - maybe they could bring it up to Missouri and run on BNSF?

Chris.