Jet engines… on trains? ✈️ Sounds like sci-fi, but this really happened. In some unique cases, they have been mounted on rail vehicles. In 1970s Czechoslovakia, engineers mounted MiG-15 jet engines onto railcars. Why? To clear heavy snow and ice from tracks and warm up frozen switches. The result: ➜ A powerful snow blower speeding down the tracks 🚀 These hybrids weren’t common, but they capture something essential: Innovation often comes from unexpected connections. Aviation tech on railways. Defense tools turned maintenance machines. Sometimes, progress means breaking the mold. And it’s our intent to push it in the right direction. ––––––––––– Ready for more? 👍 Like | 🔄 Repost | ➕ Follow for more breakthroughs in tech and innovation –––––––––––
And over in the US this equipment is still in use at various railways. New Jersey Transit had two of those contraptions still in use – one in Hoboken and one in the MMC. With all that airborne ballast, heaven help us! I dubbed the whole setup a ‘neutron accelerator’, with ‘neutron’ referring to the flying debris. The engines are from B-52 bombers. Each has a thrust of around 45 kN and burns approximately 1,000 litres of kerosene per hour.
in Russia almost all the airports have track mounted versions: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f6jfoIUPeYA
Artur Wolnica I love how this shows that the most powerful innovations often come from repurposing existing technology in unexpected ways. At RocketApex, we've seen similar breakthroughs when clients apply startup engineering principles to solve entrenched enterprise problems.
Awesome!
Senior Engineer for Railroad Vehicle Testing (Retired)
3wThe Czech version is preserved in the railway museum Chomutov. Note theat the nozzle is taken off an laying on the car.