This isn't the first time this issue has been discussed, and GGRM is not the first or the only example of this kind of thing.

A lot of museums, and not just railroad museums, have been started for all the wrong reasons.
It is amazing how many of these things are run as profit centers for a select few, or as kingdoms for a few people who have never had charge of anything in their lives (usually for good reason), and now finally are king of the sandbox. It ain't just museums, either; not many years ago, at least one NRHS Chapter was little more than a thinly-disguised for-profit travel agency, and several others are or have been fronts for car leasing schemes.

We have at least our fair share of dysfunctional and/or dishonest people in our hobby. When something like the GGRM mess becomes known, it sometimes can seem as though we have far more than our fair share. A number of museums have gone under over the past few decades; some were very active places and fairly successful by some measures. In some cases, their collections were dispersed; in others they were scrapped, and in some they "mysteriously" ended up in the hands of insiders.

A successful museum is a lot of things, but it's not a playground for a few huge egos. If it becomes that, it's days are numbered.

Another thing that has been the downfall of several museums, locomotive operators, train operators, and various chapters of NRHS, R&LHS, etc. is when a few people, none of whom were around at the beginning, have no idea what it takes to build a museum and a relationship with donors, communities, railroads, volunteers, etc. decides that the "old guard" is stupid, too cautious, too old, hasn't made the place exiting enough, won't bow to their sometimes-ludicrous ideas, and doesn't treat them with the deference they think they deserve. This usually ends up in a palace coup, with "newer, brighter, more aggressive" people taking over.

These new guys change everything, and usually end up burning all the bridges the "old heads" had painstakingly built. They change all the priorities, they piddle away the treasury, hack off the railroads they have to deal with, do half-assed work on their favorite items and ignore or get rid of others. They don't understand why railroads don't show them the red carpet treatment or how to manage money or a budget or many projects at once. Soon, they turn on each other. Meanwhile, the whole enterprise, painstakingly built up over decades of hard work and sacrifice, goes down the tubes, as the new guard keeps finding other people to blame for it.

Sometimes, if caught in time, this kind of thing can be stopped before irreparable harm is done. In these cases, all those destroyed relationships will have to be rebuilt, and it won't be easy or quick, as a lot of those who have been burned or seen decades of their own work go away won't be anxious to come back and start from scratch again.

If it's not caught in time, the museum becomes a memory.

I happen to think there is less dishonesty involved than just plain old everyday ignorance and arrogance, which can be a formidable combination.

If you take the time to carefully research some of the failures of chapters, operators and museums, or to figure why some previously very active entities hardly ever do anything any more, chances are very good that you will find some of the above things at the root of the issue. The first clue is the determination to blame everything they do wrong on the previous management; the second is to notice how many of the same names keep popping up in regard to these hostile takovers and subsequent trashings of the place and it's contents.