Armoured train
An armoured train or armored train is a railway train protected with heavy metal plating and which often includes railway wagons armed with artillery, machine guns, and autocannons. Some have also had ports used to fire small arms from the inside of the train, especially in earlier armoured trains. For the most part, they were used during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower into a new location.
Most countries have discontinued their use since road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility, train tracks proved too vulnerable to sabotage and attacks from the air, and air transportation was an even more flexible way to relocate firepower to a new location. However, there have been occasional uses in the late 20th century and early 21st century. Russia has used improvised armoured trains during the Second Chechen War and in its invasion of Ukraine.
Armoured trains were historically fighting systems, equipped with heavy weapons such as artillery. An exception was the US "White Train", the Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Transport Train, armoured and escorted by personnel armed with personal weapons.
Definition
An armoured train is characterized by the armour from which it takes its name.It is not to be confused with railway artillery, which includes a large-caliber gun and its crew, but without special protection from them. Trains simply equipped with light weapons without elaborate protective devices, e. g. a simple wagon with a few machine guns sheltered behind sandbags, are also not considered to be armoured trains.
Design and equipment
The rail cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks. Typical roles included:- Artillery – equipped to carry artillery pieces, along with a mixture of other support weapons such as machine guns and rocket launchers. See also railway guns.
- Infantry – designed to carry infantry units, may also mount machine guns.
- Machine gun – equipped with machine guns.
- Anti-aircraft – equipped with anti-aircraft weapons.
- Command – similar to infantry wagons, but designed to be a train command centre
- Anti-tank – equipped with anti-tank guns, usually in a tank gun turret
- Platform – unarmoured, used for any purpose from the transport of ammunition or vehicles, through track repair or derailing protection, to railroad ploughs for track destruction.
- Troop sleepers
- The German Wehrmacht would sometimes use a flatbed car to carry a Fremdgerät light tank, such as a captured French Somua S-35 or Czech PzKpfw 38, or a Panzer II, which could quickly drive down a ramp and pursue enemy partisans away from the railway line
- Missile transport – the USSR had railway-based RT-23 Molodets ICBMs by the late 1980s. The US at one time proposed having a railway-based system for the MX Missile program, but this never got past the planning stage. The US also used an armoured Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Transport Train, not for fighting but for transport within the country.
Armoured trains were sometimes escorted by a kind of rail-tank called a draisine. One such example was the 'Littorina' armoured trolley which had a cab in the front and rear, each with a control set so it could be driven down the tracks in either direction. Littorina mounted two dual 7.92 mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks.
History
Origins
Armoured and armed trains saw use during the 19th century in the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the First and Second Boer Wars. During the Second Boer War Winston Churchill, then a war correspondent, was travelling on an armoured train which was ambushed by a Boer commando led by General Louis Botha on 15 November 1899; the Boers captured Churchill and many of the train's contingent.Early in the 20th century, Russia used armoured trains during the Russo-Japanese War. Armoured trains were also used during the Mexican Revolution and World War I. The most intensive use of armoured trains was during the Russian Civil War. During the Chinese Civil War, White Russian emigrants in the service of Marshal Zhang Zuchang built 14 armored trains in 1924–1928. Some of them, for example "Peking" were built on the model of the First World War of the type "Zaamurets". The Spanish Civil War saw a little use of armoured trains, though World War II saw more. The French used them during the First Indochina War, a number of countries had armoured trains during the Cold War, and they were used during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
American Civil War
The most successful armed train was a single armoured wagon built to defend the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad. The railroad had been attacked by southern forces to prevent transport of Union soldiers to the front, and snipers were discouraging men attempting to repair the damage. Baldwin Locomotive Works modified a baggage wagon in late April 1861. A 24-pounder howitzer was placed on a swivel mount at the opposite end of the wagon from the pushing locomotive. The sides of the wagon were sheathed with oak planks covered with boiler plate. The end of the wagon around the howitzer was fitted with hinged panels which could be temporarily lifted to aim and fire the howitzer and then lowered to protect the crew of six men loading the howitzer with canister shot or grapeshot. The remainder of the wagon contained fifty ports for riflemen. The wagon was effective for its original purpose, but vulnerability to artillery rendered such wagons of comparatively little use during later stages of the war. In August 1864, a Confederate raiding party disabled a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad locomotive pushing an armoured wagon, and then piled ties around the armoured wagon and set them afire.Volunteers
In 1884 Charles Gervaise Boxall, a Brighton-born solicitor and officer in the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers, published The Armoured Train for Coast Defence in Great Britain, outlining a new way to employ heavy artillery. In 1894, when he had become commanding officer of the 1st Sussex AV, railway workers among the volunteers of No 6 Garrison Company manned an armoured train constructed in the workshops of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.Second Boer War
The British Army employed armoured trains during the Second Boer War, most famously a train that was extemporised in the railway workshops at Ladysmith just before the siege was closed round the town. On 15 November 1899 it left the town on reconnaissance manned by a company of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers under the command of Captain Aylmer Haldane, a company of volunteers of the Durban Light Infantry, and a 7-pounder mountain gun manned by sailors from HMS Tartar. Winston Churchill accompanied the mission as a war correspondent. The train was ambushed and part-derailed, and Haldane, Churchill and some 70 of the troops were captured after a fire-fight, although the locomotive got away with the wounded. Recalling his experience in My Early Life, Churchill wrote "Nothing looks more formidable and impressive than an armoured train; but nothing is in fact more vulnerable and helpless. It was only necessary to blow up a bridge of culvert to leave the monster stranded, far from home and help, at the mercy of the enemy".World War I
During World War I Russia used a mix of light and heavy armoured trains. The heavy trains mounted 4.2 inch or 6 inch guns; the light trains were equipped with 7.62 mm guns.Austria-Hungary also fielded armoured trains against the Italians in World War I.
A Royal Navy armoured train from Britain, armed with four QF 6 inch naval guns and one QF 4 inch naval gun, was used in support of the British Expeditionary Force in the opening phase of the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914.
File:Indian Armored train.jpg|thumb|An Auxiliary Force armoured train at National Rail Museum, New Delhi
Two armoured trains were constructed at Crewe Works during 1915 for British coastal defense duties; one was based in Norfolk and one in Edinburgh to patrol rail routes on stretches of coast considered vulnerable to amphibious assault. The trains comprised two gun trucks, one at each end, mounted with a 12-pounder quick firing gun and a machine gun; an armoured cabin behind the artillery piece contained the magazine. Inboard of each gun truck was a truck for infantry quarters. This was also armoured, with observation ports and loops for rifle fire. The armoured locomotive, with the cab and motion protected, was marshalled into the centre of the train. The driver took up a position at whichever end of the train was leading, with the regulator controlled by a mechanical connection. The intention was that the infantry, with artillery support from the train's guns, was to hold off a hostile landing force until reinforcements could be deployed.
Italy fitted twelve armed trains to protect its Adriatic coast from raids on part of the k.u.k Kriegsmarine; each train was supplemented by a support one. Each armed train was formed by a FS Class 290 locomotive, three to five gun cars, two to four ammo cars and a command car; there were three types of armed train, one with 152 mm guns, another with 120 mm guns and the last with 76 mm AA guns. These trains were considered overall a success, and blunted attempted Austro-Hungarian raids on the Italian coast.
Two armoured trains were produced in the railway workshop located at Ajmer, India. One sent to Mesopotamia by sea route for the Mesopotamian Campaign. Each train consists six wagons, Two wagons of each trains were ceiling less, each train consists 12-pounder guns, two Maxim heavy machine guns, two mine-exploding wagons, search light truck and a dynamo telegraph accommodation truck.