Last week I discovered that one of my oldest videos, posted in 2009, has apparently "gone viral". It had over 240,000 views at that time, far more than any of my other videos. It's currently nearing 450,000 views.

It's only 640 x 480 resolution, with no fancy edits or camera moves or anything. It's just a low-angle shot of Nevada Northern's steam locomotive #93 coming out of a tunnel. The sound is the best part -- you can almost feel the power as it chugs through the tunnel and past the camera.


https://youtu.be/13-kGtzO6QA


I haven't "monetized" any of my videos, so I'm not making money on this. (I'm not fond of ads, and I wouldn't want my videos being used to advertise products or causes that I oppose.) It's just exciting to see it suddenly become so popular.

Nice. I'm guessing mostly train enthusiasts?

As for monetization, who knows, they may not even accept it! I had something I selected to monetize YEARS ago get rejected this year for not having "advertiser-friendly content."

Way to go Ray! That's a lot of views ... and from an oldie!

One of the plus items was that it didn't have any music that drowned out the locomotive sounds.

PBS (Public Broadcasting Service for our foreign friends) had a special about steam trains in the west and every time they had the locomotive huffing and puffing the jerks (pardon my language) threw in music that essentially drowned out the loco's sounds. For those who wanted to experience the brute power of these old engines it was very disappointing.

On another note, the train that wound up being derailed over Interstate 5 recently (seemed to have made world news) had one of it's locomotives (modern diesel) hauled to a nearby laydown area. The "lowboy" tractor - trailer rig that hauled it was absolutely huge and required an operator at the rear to help steer it around corners.

Anyway, thanks for sharing and that's a real accomplishment, and especially it being one of your earliest vids.

Thanks guys!

Well done Ray,

It's amazing how some video take off and others don't. I hope you get luck on some of your other videos in 2018

It's over two million views now.

It's over two million views now.
That would have been $2,000 of advertising income.

That would have been $2,000 of advertising income.

I would have guessed a lot less than that.

I'm still not too keen on trying to monetize my videos that way. I dislike ads, especially if I have no control over what kind of ads they're putting with it.

BTW, it's now over 3.2 million views!

From the sidebar when I saw your video I spotted this one with

TWENTY SIX MILLION VIEWS!!

Maria Fumaça 232 em Apiúna/SC - Brasil (steam locomotive) - YouTube

Whoa. Just makes no sense to me. I guess those train enthusiasts are HARDCORE

3.1M people thought "with that many views it must be worth clicking on to watch". LOL.

Andrew

My video is now at 20.5 million views! It's currently getting at least two million new views a month. And the funny thing is, I still have no idea why it suddenly "took off" after so many years.

20.5 million... plus one (me).

Congrats, and what a strange phenomenon (the viewership, not the content).