YouTube is screwing me out of streaming ad revenue. This video of a train derailment that happened in the Gastown Vancouver railyard.
The video above currently has 116,951 views. As a photographer and producer of stock content, that is a big deal. Getting paid for that is a big deal. At this level of views, I would have been getting paid at each 10,000 level of views. If they aren’t going to pay me, couldn’t they at least give me some free ad promotion on Google directed to my photography site? FYI: This video is for sale on Kian.photography
Living above this CP Rail West Coast Express train yard can be unpleasant a lot of the time. It is a boisterous and dirty environment. For that reason, most of my building has to have their windows closed. The trains are so loud that they fill your entire apartment and block out all other sounds. You can not hear the conversation, your tv, nothing. And we are five floors up. This noise pollution can happen at any time of the day. 4 am trains will arrive in the yard, and it becomes a 1/2 to 1-hour banging, backing up, banging some more headache.
This train derailment in Vancouver was the start of my day. I have grown used to the loud sounds coming from the yard, but this was otherworldly. The sound of metal ripping and crashing, being dragged. I quickly got my phone out and ran to the window to see what was causing the racket. It took a few seconds to realize that what I saw was a train being dragged across several tracks—a term called Splitting the Switch.
Spitting the switch happens with the switch springs into a different position when the coach is travelling on the straight track. The wheels of the front coach continue on the straight path as intended, but the rear wheels are not on the diverging track. This causes the rear cars to be pulled violently from the diverging track in a sideways motion and, in this case, crash into other parked trains.