The invention of the steam locomotive and the railway, meant it was possible for the large scale movement of men and material to the battlefield in numbers which dwarfed those of previous conflicts.

One of the innovations was the use of armoured trains, in which the train became not just a transport vehicle but a combat unit in it's own right.

Armoured trains were used on many fronts from the American Civil War up to and including World War Two where they were found mostly on the Eastern Front.

Soviet armoured train;



Obviously, there is one great drawback in that they are tied to the railway tracks, and as petrol/ diesel combat vehicles are much more flexible tactically the armoured train disappeared.

Miniature armoured train on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch line during WW2;

German footage of an armoured train in action;

Strelnikov's train from Doctor Zhivago:

The Poles made extensive use of draisines - armoured car / tankette vehicles with railway wheels and road wheels or tracks up to WWII

Armoured trains as part of Imperial policy, in Egypt 1882:

Though they didn't always work:

Armoured Train which saw service with various Armies:

Armoured Train Zaamurets

Armoured Trains in WW1:

Triceratops wrote:

The invention of the steam locomotive and the railway, meant it was possible for the large scale movement of men and material to the battlefield in numbers which dwarfed those of previous conflicts.

Not so much about an armoured train as such but rather about a purpose-built military railway. The Grand Crimean Central Railway was built by British forces in 1855 during the second year of the Crimean War. It linked the British base at Balaklava on the south coast of the Crimean peninsula, to the Allied forces laying siege to Sebastopol 14 miles away on the west coast. Once the decision had been made to build the railway, progress was astonishingly quick. Within 2 months track had been laid from Balaklava half-way to Sebastopol. The railway was fully operational by the summer and included branch lines linking to the French and Sardinian contingents on the siege front. The railway was able to bring up hundreds of tons of ordnance which would prove decisive in the siege bombardment of Sebastopol, forcing the capitulation of the Russian defenders there and hastening the end of the war.

The War Department developed a network of narrow gauge railways for the transport of troops and munitions to the trenches in WW1. Steam, petrol, petrol-electric and petrol-paraffin powered engines were used.



McEwan-Pratt advertisement from 1910 for their internal combustion engines: