Armoured train An armoured train is a railway train protected with armour . They are usually equipped with railroad cars armed with artillery and machine gun s . 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 armoured trains were too vulnerable to track 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 : 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 t " wo dual 7 . 92mm MG13 machine gun turrets from Panzer I light tanks . History . Origins . Armoured trains saw use during the 19th century in the American Civil War ( 1861 – 1865 ) , the Franco - Prussian War ( 1870 – 1871 ) , the First and Second Boer Wars ( 1880 – 81 and 1899 – 1902 ) . During the Second Boer War , Winston Churchill , then a war - correspondent , was travelling aboard an armoured train on 15 November 1899 , when a Boer commando led by General Louis Botha ambushed the train . The Boers captured Churchill and many of the train ' s contingent , but many others escaped , including wounded soldiers who had been carried on the train ' s engine . Early in the 20th century , Russia used armoured trains during the Russo - Japanese War . Armoured trains went on to see use during the Mexican Revolution ( 1910 – 1920 ) and World War I ( 1914 – 1918 ) . The most intensive use of armoured trains was during the Russian Civil War ( 1918 – 1920 ) . The Spanish Civil War saw a little use of armoured trains , though World War II ( 1939 – 1945 ) saw more . The French used them during the First Indochina War ( 1946 – 1954 ) , and a number of countries had armoured trains during the Cold War . The last combat use appears to have been during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s . 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 76 . 2mm 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 gun s 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 . Interwar years . The Czechoslovak Legion used heavily armed and armoured trains to control large lengths of the Trans - Siberian Railway ( and of Russia itself ) during the Russian Civil War at the end of World War I . The Bolshevik forces in the Russian civil war used a wide range of armoured trains . Many were improvised by locals , others were constructed by naval engineers at the Putilov and Izhorskiy factories . As a result the trains ranged from little more than sandbagged flatbeds to the heavily armed and armoured trains produced by the naval engineers . An attempt to standardise the design from October 1919 only had limited success . By the end of the war the Bolshevik forces had 103 armoured trains of all types . The Estonians built five armoured trains during the Estonian War of Independence . They were under the command of Johan Pitka . After the First World War the use of armoured trains declined . They were used in China in the twenties and early thirties during the Chinese Civil War , most notably by the warlord Zhang Zongchang , who employed refugee Russians to man them . World War II . Poland used armoured trains extensively during the Invasion of Poland . One observer noted that " " Poland had only few armoured trains , but their officers and soldiers were fighting well . Again and again they were emerging from a cover in thick forests , disturbing German lines " " . One under - appreciated aspect of so many Polish armoured trains being deployed during the Polish Defensive War in 1939 is that when German planes attacked the railroads , it was usually the tracks themselves . As late as September 17 , three fresh divisions in the east were moved westward by train . On September 18 , three more divisions followed . This in turn prompted Nazi Germany to reintroduce armoured trains into its own armies . Germany then used them to a small degree during World War II . However , they introduced significant designs of a versatile and well - equipped nature , including railcars which housed anti - aircraft gun turrets , or designed to load and unload tanks and railcars which had complete armour protection with a large concealed gun / howitzer . Germany also had fully armoured locomotives which were used on such trains . During the Slovak National Uprising , the Slovak resistance used three armoured trains . The " Hurban " , " Štefánik " and Masaryk , which were built in the Zvolen railway factory , are preserved and can be seen near Zvolen Castle . The Soviets had a large number of armoured trains at the start of World War II but many were lost in 1941 . Trains built later in the war tended to be fitted with T - 34 or KV series tank turrets . Others were fitted as specialist anti - aircraft batteries . A few were fitted as heavy artillery batteries often using guns taken from ships . Canada also ( briefly ) used an armoured train to patrol the Pacific coast and guard against a possible Japanese invasion Twelve armoured trains were formed in Britain in 1940 as part of the preparations to face a German invasion ; these were initially armed with QF 6 pounder 6 cwt Hotchkiss guns and six Bren Guns . They were operated by Royal Engineer crews and manned by Royal Armoured Corps troops . In late 1940 preparations began to hand the trains over to the Polish Army in the West , who operated them until 1942 . They continued in use in Scotland and were operated by the Home Guard until the last one was withdrawn in November 1944 . A 6 - pounder wagon from one of these trains is preserved at the Tank Museum . A miniature armoured train ran on the 15 - inch gauge Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway . Later uses . In the First Indochina War , the French Union used the armoured and armed train La Rafale as both a cargo - carrier and a mobile surveillance unit . In February 1951 the first Rafale was in service on the Saigon - Nha Trang line , Vietnam while from 1947 to May 1952 the second one which was escorted by onboard Cambodian troops of the BSPP ( " Brigade de Surveillance de Phnom Penh " ) was used on the Phnom Penh - Battambang line , Cambodia . In 1953 both trains were attacked by the Viet - Minh guerrilla s who destroyed or mined stone bridges when passing by . Fulgencio Batista ’ s army operated an armoured train during the Cuban revolution though it was derailed and destroyed during the Battle of Santa Clara . Facing the threat of Chinese cross - border raids during the Sino - Soviet split , the USSR developed armoured trains in the early 1970s to protect the Trans - Siberian Railway . According to different accounts , four or five trains were built . Every train included ten main battle tank s , two light amphibious tanks , several AA guns , as well as several Armoured Personnel Carrier s , supply vehicles and equipment for railway repairs . They were all mounted on open platforms or in special rail cars . Different parts of the train were protected with 5 – 20 mm thick armour . These trains were used by the Soviet Army to intimidate nationalist paramilitary units in 1990 during the early stages of the Nagorno - Karabakh War . An improvised armoured train named the " Krajina express " ( " Krajina ekspres " ) was used during the war in Croatia ( part of the Yugoslav wars ) of the early 1990s by the army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina ( a self - proclaimed republic of Serbs living within Croatia that sought to remain in Yugoslavia ) . Composed of three fighting cars and three freight cars hooked to the front to protect it from mine blasts , the train carried a M18 Hellcat with a 76mm cannon , a 40mm Bofors , a 20mm cannon , twin 57mm rocket launchers and a 120mm mortar , plus several machine guns of between 12 . 7 and 7 . 62 mm . During the siege of Bihac in 1994 , it was attacked on a few occasions with antitank rocket - propelled grenades and 76mm guns and hit by a 9K11 Malyutka missile , but the damage was minor , as most of the train was covered with thick sheets of rubber which caused the missile ' s warhead to explode too early to do any real damage . The train was eventually destroyed by its own crew lest it fall into enemy hands during Operation Storm , the Croatian offensive which overran the Srpska Krajina . The Army of Republika Srpska operated a similar train that was ambushed and destroyed in October 1992 at the entrance to the town of Gradačac by Bosnian Muslim forces that included a T - 55 tank . The wreckage was later converted into a museum . The Croatian Army deployed a two - wagon armoured train built in Split with a shield composed of two plates , one 8mm and the other 6mm thick , with a 30 - 50mm gap filled with sand between them . The vehicle was armed with 12 . 7mm machine guns . Towards the end of the Cold War , both superpowers began to develop railway - based ICBM s mounted on armoured trains ; the Soviets deployed the SS - 24 missile in 1987 , but budget costs and the changing international situation led to the cancellation of the programme , with all remaining railway - based missiles finally being deactivated in 2005 . One armoured train that remains in regular use is that of Kim Il - sung and Kim Jong - il , which the former received as a gift from the Soviet Union and the latter used heavily for state visits to China as he had a fear of flying . Armoured tram . Armoured trams also existed , although apparently not purpose - built as some of the armoured trains . The just - formed Red Army used at least one armoured tram during the fighting for Moscow in the October Revolution in 1917 . The Slovak National Uprising , more well known for its armoured trains described above , also used at least one makeshift example .