Armored Trains

Here is an interesting title hot off the press from Osprey - Armored Trains. I can only imagine the challenge the author must have had to edit the wealth of information at his disposal down to meet the page count. This is clearly the tip of the iceberg with the coverage of this title.

Author Stephen Zaloga provides an overview of the history of armored trains from their early days in the mid 1800s in Europe and in the American Civil War, through the two world wars, and to their final appearances in the decades that followed.

This title provides some impressive coverage of armored trains, far beyond what you might expect. There are photos and color profiles for German, Russian, Soviet, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, British, Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, and more examples. The coverage of this title is broken down in the table of contents as:

• Origins
• World War I
• The Russian Civil War
• War of the Empires
• Armored Dragons
• World War II
• The Decline of Armored Trains

The book contains a nice range of black and white photography of the variety of armored train cars. In addition, there are numerous color profiles of selected rail cars and diagrams of typical armored train railcar compositions.

This book is a must-have for the rail historian and military analyst to understand how this weapon was designed and employed over a span of more than a century. This title is recommended!

My sincere thanks to Osprey Publications for this review sample!