It was eventually sold again to Jack Showalter, who operated it on his Allegany Central Railroad from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

1286 was purchased directly from the CP in 1964 by former Reading Company employee George M. Hart, who founded Rail Tours Incorporated to host several steam excursion trains throughout the Northeastern United States.

1286 was restored in 1965, and it began pulling tours on the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad (MPA) in York County alongside other steam locomotives, including CP G5c No.

1286 was pulling an excursion over the MPA near York, it derailed and bent its cowcatcher after hitting a pile of gravel created by heavy rain.

1286 pulled a series of roundtrip excursion runs on the Western Maryland (WM) mainline between York, Gettysburg, Williamsport, Hagerstown, and Cumberland, and it was accompanied by CP No.

[3][4] Beginning in 1967, Ross E. Rowland, the owner of the High Iron Company (HICO), began leasing Nos.

In early February 1968, a furnace broke down at a power plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Nos.

1286 and 1238, he sold both of them to John F. Rowe of the Red Clay Valley Railway Equipment and Leasing Company, and he made plans to use both locomotives to power his own excursion trains.

After a photo session took place at the station, a Penn Central diesel locomotive was coupled in front of the two G5s to pull the train back to Baltimore after dawn.

The locomotive was brought back under steam in 1975, and it began pulling tourist trains at fifteen miles per hour along a tributary of the James River.

[7] On one occasion, an ex-Chicago, Burlington and Quincy office car derailed after dawn with several ACRR crews off duty, so Showalter gathered two railfans and some of his friends to help him rerail it, using chunks of wood, and No.

1286 pulled the last train the ACRR hosted on the Cumberland line on December 8, 1990, before Showalter and the SRDC ran into ownership disputes that prevented them from renewing their leasing contract.

The following month, however, CSX began rising the insurance costs, and Showalter could no longer afford to run his trains on their mainline trackage.

1286's last run occurred in October 1997 before it was put into storage on the Shenandoah Valley Railroad (SVRR), with Showalter living inside a camping trailer to protect his equipment from vandals.

In July of that year, the locomotive was towed back to Staunton to be lifted onto a flatcar with its tender on a separate car with No.

1238's tender, and it was subsequently moved on the CSX mainline before it interchanged with the CP to be hauled to Manitoba.

1286 arrived in Winnipeg,[9] and as it was lifed off of the flatcar, it touched Canadian soil for the first time since it was sold to Hart in 1964.