OK, I am going to jump into this discussion as archival preservation of personal railroad photography collections (after death) has been a "hot" motivational topic for me since my youngest years - and continues to be as a member of the Board of Directors of the Feather River Rail Society/Western Pacific Railroad Museum of Portola. Growing up a railfan, my uncle (Harry Johnston of Pacific Palisades, CA) was also a life-long railfan, model railroader and railroad photographer. He and my mom grew up in Santa Cruz, CA and over the years he had accumulated one of the most detailed collections of both B&W prints and color slides of the SP operations on the Coast Route and Santa Cruz Branch - which covered the steam era of the late 1930s through the change to diesel power in the 1950s and into the late 1960s. His model railroad was one of the best (and mostly unknown) of the early 1960s, as he had modeled the SP Santa Cruz Branch of the 1940s from Watsonville to Santa Cruz then up the San Lorenzo River to Felton - including hand-built replicas of the Watsonville Jct roundhouse, the Capitola bridge, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk as it looked in the 1940s, scale redwood trees and accurate SP steam locomotives (in an era before acurate brass locomotives). Anyway, when he died in 1972, my aunt and cousins couldn't move fast enough to dispose of my uncle's railroad collections. Some of the photos and pieces of the model railroad went to local railfan friends, but a vast majority (including that irreplaceable photo collection of the SP Santa Cruz Branch) went into the dumpster. I was deemed "too young" for anything except one of my uncle's hand-built wood boxcars for his "Rincon, Bonny Doon and Western" model railroad logging line.
FRRS Founder Norman Holmes also has a similar story. He was friends with Bill Pennington (if the name sounds familar, look at some of the older WP photos that have been published). Mr Pennington had spent most of his lifetime in the Plumas County area photographing and documenting (with maps) the logging railroad operations in the northern Sierra Nevada/southern Cascades and the steam operations of the WP from the 1920s through the 1950s. The Pennington collection was equal to any of the other great railroad photo/maps/documents collections of that time! When he died, his wife wanting to dispose of the "hated railroad stuff" had it all hauled off to the dump. Norm found out about that and went to the dump the first thing the next morning. He was able to retrieve only about 10% of the entire Pennington collection. The pieces and photos that Norm recovered from this criminal act are truly invaluable in trying to piece together the history from that era, but it is very sad to realize that this is only 10% of what existed.
I understand there is a huge mix of of bad feelings and good feelings toward many RR museums, regional history museums, local libraries and even universities when considering where a personal photo collection should go. Some people have expressed the sad opinion that they would rather have their life's work torched than ever let anyone ever use it for any purpose after they are gone. Many others have expressed outrage that libraries and museums charge $50 or more for use of a photo from an archived collection, or that some RR museums have poor or non-existant archive preservation of past donated photo collections.
So, with that said and acknowleging that my own personal slide collection (which is 95% long-life Kodachrome) numbers around 75,000 images, here is what I suggest to fellow railfans thinking about what to do with their photo collections.
1 - Don't "cull" your collection down to "the best" photos before disposing of it. We all have taken photos of subjects besides moving trains that were considered fodder for the "round file" in the past. They become highly valuable to libraries, historical societies and fellow railfans later in reconstructing the physical/economic geography a railroad operated through. As an example, I am going through my collection looking for all of the "throw-away" photos I took years ago of the SP/WP/Kaiser Sand and Gravel trackage/buildings/support structures around the East Pleasanton/Radum area, as a model railroader in the Austin, TX area is accruately reproducing this location on his model railroad of the WP from Stockton to Radum.
2 - Designate in your will or living trust a specific person (best if it is a fellow railfan) who is interested making sure your collection is properly handled. I suggest someone who is one or two generations younger and is not a family member. I have found that it is almost a "universal truth" that family members in charge of disposing of someone's estate have no clue or desire to show proper restraint.
3 - Also specify in your will or living trust exact item descriptions and destination instructions so that there will not be any misunderstandings after your death. As an example for my own personal photo collection, all of my Milwaukee Road stuff is to go to the South Cle Elum Depot group in Washington State (they are becoming the defacto Milw Road archives collection in the West), my Oregon & Northwestern stuff (and maybe even the caboose?) will go to the county history museum in Burns, OR while everything else will go to the FRRS/WPRRHS archives in Portola.
4 - Remember that it is very, very expensive for museums and libaries the properly catalouge (plus produce an on-line access point) and then permanently archive in a highly-secure, humidity-controlled, temperature-controlled storage facilty any photo collections they receive from an estate. This is why many places charge such high prices for copies of photos. So I try to suggest to people thinking of donating personal photo collections to also include in their will or estate a donation of "x" number of dollars or a block of stocks/bonds to go along with their photo collection to help offset the costs. Figure a minimum of $10K for a museum to properly process and catalouge a donated personal photo collection, then at least $2K per year for costs of secure archive storage.
5 - Repeatedly tell family members that you have a detailed will or living trust with instructions to be followed when necessary. That way nobody is suprised when the instructions must be carried out.
I am certain there are many other opinions on this subject.
Wayne Monger