Armoured Fighting Vehicle - Modern Classification By Type and Role - Armoured Train

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 armoured trains were too vulnerable to track sabotage as well as attacks from the air. However, the Russian Federation used improvised armoured trains in the Second Chechen War in the late 1990s and 2000s.

The railroad cars on an armoured train were designed for many tasks such as carrying guns and machine guns, infantry units, anti-aircraft guns. During World War II, the Germans 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

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.