At the height of the cold war, amidst talk of radical changes in transportation, a battle cry could be heard from our Soviet neighbors: “We’re Russian, we don’t need no stinking bullet train … we have a jet plane instead”:

This is actually a real train, albeit a prototype, built by the Russians in the early 1970s. Its maximum speed was about 180 mph, pretty impressive for an age when trains rarely exceeded 80, and it would still be amongst the fastest trains in the world today. via English Russia

Not surprisingly, the Russians got the idea from the United States:

This is the M-497, a jet-powered engine was tested in New York during the summer of 1966. No passengers were ever transported, but the train did exceed 183 mph (still a U.S. record today).

I would have figured the Russians would have at least tried to hit 184 to clinch the record, but (like me) they probably were just having trouble with the metric system conversion and gave up.

via Dark Roasted Blend