Andy,
A problem is that research libraries are not necessarily archives. And if you think the disposal of interesting railroad related material is recent, I’ll tell you about my first summer job in high school in 1965. I dusted all the books in the U Conn law library. In there there were Connecticut Railroad Commission reports from the 1870s to the1920s; beautifully bound, printed in four colors and with exquisite fold-out maps. Later that summer I found them in a dumpster out back. Why I didn’t take them home I don’t know, but they went to the dump.

Maynard Stowe