Mixing A Fighter Jet With A Bus And A Train Is A Bad Idea

Frozen railroad switches can be a menace during winter, but nothing 5,955 lbs. of jet power can't solve.

What you see here is the body of of Hungarian made Ikarus 60 bus welded to a railway chassis with a Klimov VK-1 jet engine up front straight out of a MiG-15 fighter jet.

While the Ikarus 60's six-cylinder diesel was considered to be a rather noisy engine when it came out in 1952, that was still nothing compared to the jet according to reader's comment on IHO.hu:

They put a home made diffusor to the exhaust to slow and direct the thrust down a bit. The turbine's air intake holes are the wired up at the front wheel arches mostly to avoid it sucking larger objects (or humans) in.

Since I can't see an engine, I would say it couldn't move on its own, nor stop since it has no brakes either. The Ikarus body was needed to protect the chassis, and I guess this was what they had laying around. Around 120-130 db in the cabin, that's for sure!

While the picture is most likely of Hungarian origin indeed and we've seen some weird stuff using jet power from there before, this horrific prototype must have been destroyed at some point as the Hungarian Railway Company started using HLS units as mobile flamethrowers soon after.

Here's a picture of one in action in the early '80s:

Back when kerosine was cheap thanks to the Cold War.

Photo credit: Fortepan and IHO.