THE FARCICAL SIDE OF THE COLD WAR. I recently came across an English Russia feature of an experimental jet railcar.

English Russia photo from koblokov.net

The car is the control unit of an ER22 elektrichka with a pair of engines from the YAK-40 passenger jet on the roof.

The article says little about the purpose of the car, which may still exist somewhere in Russia. It was created a few years after the New York Central put a pair of B-36 jet engines on a Budd Car.

Photo courtesy Dark Roasted Blend

The New York Central built the car as a test car, to evaluate the effect of high speeds on track-train dynamics. Both held together at speeds up to 180 mph. The test engineer subsequently wrote a book about it. There's a shorter version at American Heritage. Shortly after the test, New York Central announced a restructuring of its passenger service away from overnight long-distance trains in favor of shorter hauls, up to about 200 miles. The Empire Service of upstate New York is the only restructuring to be delivered. Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, all of which offered comparably close population centers, never saw the augmented service, a decision that had knock-on effects when Amtrak became the passenger train operator, generally offering a reduced service on the existing network.

Although the New York Central's car was a test bed put together on the cheap, and the Soviet car probably also was (or perhaps the Ministry of Imitate and Claim to Inwent First had a hand in it) the French experimented, at about the same time with jet-powered monorails. Here's some English-language discussion of them.