The strange & now sadly abandoned Soviet Jet Train from the 1970s!
If you thought that the Ekranoplan or also known as the Ground Effect Vehicle, which was basically an aircraft that never lifts up off the ground but rather glides over it and was capable of carrying huge loads over the sea surface at great speeds, is the most bizarre vehicle of the 70s and the height of the cold war we now present you the Jet Powered Train.
This extreme machine, had dual purpose, aside from the obvious fact of testing a train that is able to be driven along by jet propulsion, this carriage also helped engineers test high speed dynamics of a rail vehicle, and at the same time, test low level usability and durability of jet engines.
There were many reasons why the project never succeeded and amongst the top ones was the fact that those Yakovlev YAK-40 jet engines guzzled huge amounts of fuel when pulling a train down the tracks at the top speed of 154mph, which was in fact the fastest speed this rail vehicle achieved in one of the tests.
Check out many other cool facts about this little engine that couldn’t in the video bellow and find out the amazing fact that something of this sort holds the National record for the fastest train in the U.S.
