Metrolink is getting new locomotives through a cash for clunkers type program. This means that the locomotives they replace must be made inoperable. There is currently a petition to save metrolinks soal ex Amtrak F40PH https://www.change.org/p/collette-langs ... -f40ph-800 It seems though the locomotive will still need to be made to never run again (maybe pore cement into the crankcase?) Anyway as I said before a locomotive does not have to run to be a great addition to a museum as long as everything is there and you let people explore it, it should function as an educational exibit.

The issue of making a locomotive inoperable due to an air quality grant came up before:

"Exploratory conversations with the railroad’s management determined that their funding grant through California’s Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program, which enabled M & ET to purchase the cleanerburning genset units, was requiring them to destroy the engine blocks of the 70-tonners! This would have not only destroyed their historical integrity but rendered them inoperable and basically parts units or scrap. PSRMA did some investigating on their own and determined that the local air-quality agency had erred on the block-destruction interpretation and it wasn’t necessary. "

see https://www.psrm.org/trains/diesel/sp-5119/

Will someone PLEASE document precisely what the PSRM people found out as a 'loophole' to prevent the prime-mover destruction, and whether the exception (whatever it is) applies to public agencies as well as short-line railroads acquiring 'green' power?

Surely there is a brief discussing the exception, or a legal explanation with precedents and so forth. That is what is needed here, not just a note that the exception was discovered.