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TRAINS MAY SEEM an innocuous part of the travelling furniture in the 21st century but in the last century, armoured trains were a vital piece of machinery.

The armoured train was first seen in the American Civil War, according to The Jamestown Foundation. But the battle-ready form of transportation came to prominence in World War I, when Russia used it as a means of defence during cross-country travel.

The trains were used by most of the European nations fighting in World War II: Poland took advantage of them extensively, Nazi Germany reacted and began using them, the Russians kept their fleet up. Even Canada patrolled its west coast with one for a time in case of an invasion, according to Canada’s Virtual Museum.

The main photograph on this piece shows the early Polish train, Smialy, is one of the most famous of the era. The rotating turret on the front helped clear out anything that got in the way.

These trains were not just armoured, they were heavily armed. Cannons, machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons, and even tanks were on board these moving walls of terror.

While the armoured train could transport large amounts of firepower rapidly cross country, they also had quite a few drawbacks.

They were hardly stealthy. Their reliance on tracks not only limited where they could go, it provided the enemy with an easy target: Sabotage the tracks, and you disable the train.

After World War II, automotive technology had caught up sufficiently to render the armoured train obsolete. But these insane trains have left an indelible mark on history.