Hi Lee,
Well, since I've been a bit critical of Railpictures I also have to defend them a bit. I've only been submitting there since last spring, when the first lockdowns coupled with my retirement gave me more free time than I'd had in decades. I'm hardly a big name, and I'm not a paid member but I've had about 90 of my images accepted since my first submission in late March and only a very small handful rejected - honestly I think less than 5 after appeals and minor corrections of images originally rejected, and I've only appealed 2 and corrected and re-submitted maybe another 2. Kevin Madore who posts here occasionally is certainly a better known shooter than myself, but he's said he's also not a paid member and he has over 2,000 on the site. A number of other regular posters here also have many photos in the database but I'll not mention them simply because I don't know if any of them are paid members or not. You really don't have to pay or know someone to get acceptance. Honest.
The key to getting images into the database is understanding what the screeners like and what they don't like. I don't bother to submit some images that I think are quite good, because I know the screeners there are unlikely to accept them. And that's OK. No one is going to agree completely with every decision on a curated site.
So why bother? Despite my gripes about not understanding how to increase views on some images, the site still packs a lot of bang for the effort. I submit images there because they get seen by a lot of folks and I enjoy having others see my stuff.
FYI.
Scott