The Burney Gold Spike Special effectively brought the first period of McCloud River Railroad excursions to a close. The #25 and #24 went back to work in the woods at Camp Kinyon until replaced by the lumber company's diesel #1 in late summer, at which time they shifted over to Pondosa for the last few months of logging railroad operations out of that camp. By late that fall the #24 had been sold for scrap with the rest of the last steam locomotives while Flake Willis talked the Board of Directors into keeping the #25 on hand as a reminder of the steam years. The railfan community as a whole meanwhile went off chasing remaining steam operations elsewhere.

Diesel powered excursions returned to the road in the late 1950s. The next recorded excursion happened between 22-24 May 1959 when the California-Nevada Railroad Historical Society chartered one of their "Shasta Wonderland" excursion that operated on a loop out of the Bay Area, traveling up the Western Pacific and Great Northern to Lookout Junction, then across the McCloud River to Mt. Shasta City, and finally back south on the Southern Pacific after a short side trip to the Yreka Western. A year and a half later other rail preservation groups sponsored the "Evergreen Journey" that over the course of 2-6 September travelled over the Santa Fe from Los Angeles to Stockton, then the Western Pacific to Bieber, then Great Northern to Hambone, then McCloud River to Mt. Shasta City, then Southern Pacific to Montague, then over to the Yreka Wester to Yreka and back, before heading back to Stockton over the Southern Pacific, and finally back to Los Angeles over the Santa Fe. Finally, on 8 May 1960 the Northern California Railroad Club sponsored a caboose trip over the McCloud.

All this activity, plus the growing number of steam tourist railroads on the West Coast, focused attention back on the #25. In early 1962 the railroad responded to the mounting requests to return the #25 to service and started work on the locomotive. The California-Nevada Railroad Historical Society and the Pacific Coast Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society agreed to jointly sponsor an excursion marking the #25's return to operation. The groups decided they wanted to run a special passenger train out of the bay area, and instead of leasing equipment they decided to acquire their own cars for the trip. PCC bought three coaches, Cal-Nev bought a combination car and an all-day lunch car, and the two groups together purchased an observation car for use in the trip. The McCloud River Railroad had converted one of their work flats to an open air flatcar for one of the trips in the late 1950s, and added it onto the end of the consist. The clubs also leased the former Yreka Western #19 and brought it back to McCloud for the trip. The excursion was popular and sold out but still ended up losing the sponsoring organizations a great deal of money, largely because of the capital costs associated with purchasing the passenger cars.