page_title: Armoured train
section_title: Design and equipment
hierarchical_section_title: Armoured train / Design and equipment
context_page_description: An armoured train is a railway train protected with armour. Armoured trains usually include railroad cars armed with artillery, machine guns and autocannons, some also had slits used to fire small arms like pistols and rifles from the inside of the train, this feature was especially prevalent in earlier versions of armoured trains. For the most part they were used during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they offered an innovative way to quickly move large amounts of firepower. Most countries discontinued their use – road vehicles became much more powerful and offered more flexibility, and train tracks proved too vulnerable to sabotage as well as to attacks from the air. However, the Russian Federation used improvised armoured trains in the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.
context_section_description: 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. See also railway guns.
  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 Fremdgerät, 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 MX Missile program but this never got past the planning stage
  Different types of armour were used to protect from attack by tanks. In addition to various metal plates, concrete and sandbags were used in some cases for improvised armoured trains.
  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 7.92mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks.
caption: A Polish armoured train, the Danuta, in 1939. From the left: artillery wagon, infantry assault wagon, armoured locomotive, artillery wagon
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