Car Train.

dont know who or what, but its obviously in pN GYR.

Wow, that is beyond awesome.

I think that is Russian; it would romanize as rP BIG

(P think pi, like the Greek letter; and G is the Greek gamma; the little r is a Greek rho)

Probably it says "River Bug" (pronounced boog) in Ukrainian. Russian would be "reka" and would not abbreviate to "rp" but I don't know what it is in Ukrainian dialect. There are two rivers with this name, one on the border with Poland and one that flows past Vinnitsa into the Black Sea. See wikipedia for short descriptions.

No wait: there are periods after both R. and P. This means it is "Reka Pivdenniyi (abbreviated) "Bug", or "River Southern Bug".

Hmmm, reminds me of "Zivot je Cudo", Emir Kusturica's last film...

In failed states/economies - not unusual to find in the former Soviet Union - locals often take advantage of the existing rail infrastructure with their own inexpensive rail-enabled vehicles, operating safely outside the insufficient schedules of the official state railways.

A better-known example of this is in Cambodia with a number of tiny trains known as the Bamboo Railway. A BBC news story about Cambodian bamboo trains made the rounds through "cool stuff on the net" blogs perhaps 3 or 4 months ago.

hi,
Im an Aussie, and i have seen this type of thing before. I was on a trip with my best mate and his dad (who was a surveyer) and we were driving around in the country. A huge ute drove past on tiny little train wheels and it was so strange. Paul (the dad) explained it that there are some cars that have an extra gear where they have some other auxilliary device attatched to the car, like a huge winch or in this case train wheels. In countryside Australia, apparently they use it for some sort of maintenance/service/repair thingo or something. When they need to get off the tracks, they just take it out of gear, and retract the wheels and drive off. So I am not quite sure what this wierd photo is, but that is probably a similar story in a different context.

You mean like this, Liberal Avenger?

I doubt this vehicle is dual-duty, if you look closely, there are no wheels, or wheel openings either. At least it always goes in a straight line.

If the railway is abandoned, I suppose it doesn't need to ever get off the track!

Thanks for the identification, JRM!

Here is a full story (and more pictures) regarding this story: http://angryxpeh.livejournal.com/492903.html