A final comment (at least from me)

While I found some helpful info on some of the museum websites, I would say for the most part they were not "use friendly" or complete. The majority had some kind of very general mission statement and only delt with procedural issues with regard to donations.
And given the plethora of museums with varying missions, seems to me some museum association coordination would make sense. My search was hardly exhaustive, covered the western railroad museums I could think of off the top of my head. And found some very nice websites. But my question was very specific.
I have sent two emails to the museum that seems most suitable for some of my stuff and have never gotten a reply. But my personal stuff is not really the issue because I have enough friends who are serious collectors/historians that my stuff, for what it's worth, will get taken care of one way or the other.
It seems to me the real issue here will be stuff from smaller collections, from folks who don't really consider themselves collectors or historians, who don't have "contacts". Seems to me the museum community needs to reach out to these people and encourage them to look through the family albums before they either toss them or put them back into the attic. Make it easy. The internet is a powerful and cheap way to do this.
Okay, off my soap box, beaten the dog, now I'll shut up and go to the bar.
JBW