Interesting thought. I wonder what the long-term effect of railroadiana sales by the railroads themselves would be. Feeding the high cost of a lot of decommissioned hardware is the unavailability and therefore rarity. A lot of it goes straight to the scrapper, and junkyards are certainly not going to mess with onesy-twosy sales. To date, most hardware and nearly all paper railroadiana are intercepts of opportunity or timing, rescued material otherwise headed for the dumpster or scrap heap. Heck, I know guys who have in fact dumpster-dived at RR division offices, finding "OMG!" treasures significant to our community but worthless old files to the RRs.
Anyway, the RRs are not exactly known for their administrative flexibility, and it would take flexibility and the willingness to recognize the value to an obscure niche market. Actually, I have recent reason to think that, if approached and considered, the opposite would happen, where RR management is much more likely to conclude that disposed materials like this are "proprietary", and lock it down en transit to shredding or other controlled destruction.
