   an armoured train is a railway train protected with armour. they are usually equipped with railroad cars armed with artillery and machine guns. they were mostly used during the late 19th and early 20th century, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower. their use was discontinued in most countries when road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility and because train tracks were too vulnerable to sabotage as well as attacks from the air. however, the russian federation used improvised armored trains in the second chechen war in the late 1990s and 2000s. == design and equipment ==    the rail cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks. typical roles included: * artillery - fielding a mixture of guns, machine guns and rocket launchers. * infantry - designed to carry infantry units, may also mount machine guns. * machine gun - dedicated to 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 put a fremdgerÃ¤t, such as a captured french somua s-35 or czech pzkpfw 38(t) light tank, or panzer ii light tank on a flatbed car which could be quickly offloaded by means of a ramp and used away from the range of the main railway line to chase down enemy partisans * missile transport - the ussr had railway-based rt-23 molodets icbms by the late 1980s (to reduce the chances of a first strike succeeding in destroying the launchers for a retaliatory strike). the us at one time proposed having a railway-based system for the [[lgm-118 peaceke
Armoured_trains