When You Put a Train on Tires and Call It a Truck
Some Soviet engineers looked at a 150-liter diesel locomotive and said: “What if… tires?” And that’s how we got one of the weirdest, most ambitious, and utterly impractical heavy vehicles in post-Soviet history — an unholy hybrid of a Kolomna DM62 diesel locomotive and a MAZ-547 missile carrier, packed with all-wheel-drive, all-wheel-steering, and enough horsepower to rip the asphalt off a highway.
Was it a bold vision of diesel-electric overland domination? Or just a failed Frankenstein’s monster with a bad hydraulic hangover?
Let’s break down Russia’s diesel-electric 12×12 overlanding train, a machine too strange to live and too diesel to die.
The Specs: A Diesel-Electric Lab on Wheels
Here’s what made this Cold War fever dream tick:
Base chassis: MAZ-547 — a 12×12 missile transporter built for off-road ICBM hauling
Body: Ex-military Kolomna DM62 locomotive, number 1727
Engine:
Type: 14D40, two-stroke V12 diesel
Size: 150.6 liters (yes, really)
Output: ~1,970 horsepower
Power system:
Diesel-electric drive — a 1,300 kW DC generator powering 12 wheel motors
80 hp electric motor per wheel, all independently steerable
Steering: Full all-wheel steering with potential for crab-walk mode
Basically, this was an electric locomotive’s guts wrapped in a missile truck’s bones, trying to do ballet in the mud.
Why Build This Thing?
Good question.
According to reports, this monster was built in 2002 at the Kolomna Locomotive Works, likely for the Russian Ministry of Defense. The goal? To test advanced steering systems and electric drive tech on large, multi-axle vehicles.
But there’s a twist — some sources claim it might’ve been intended as a mobile power station, or even a command center. Others believe it was just an elaborate tech demo for a problem no one really had.
So… Did It Work?
Not exactly. When they powered it up for the first time, things went downhill faster than its brakes could handle (assuming it had any functioning ones).
Here’s how the maiden voyage allegedly went:
The vehicle moved just a few meters before its third axle failed
The fourth wheel set straight-up detached
Hydraulic systems leaked like a busted submarine
In short: it flopped. The dream of a train-truck hybrid crumbled under its own complexity. Shortly after, it was deactivated, mounted on static axles, repainted like a regular locomotive, and put on display outside Kolomna’s VNIKTI Institute.
You can’t kill a diesel dream, but you can put it on a pedestal.
What If It Had Worked?
If this machine hadn’t suffered catastrophic axle failure on day one, it might’ve become:
A mobile generator for field bases, using its locomotive-grade generator to power gear
A command-and-control unit for remote military deployments
A prototype for diesel-electric off-road haulers, decades ahead of the current push toward hybrid heavy equipment
Instead, it lives on as a symbol of Cold War ambition colliding with mechanical reality.
💬 Your Turn
What do you think? Was this just a failed Soviet fever dream, or a glimpse into a diesel-electric future that never came? Drop a comment and share…