Right up to the mid-1940s, armored trains played the role of self-propelled artillery, often in a highly mobile environment. They were equipped with infantry and light tanks, that could be deployed for reconnaissance and harassment of enemy units. They rarely operated alone, often there were supply trains and other support units making runs to keep the armored train unit ready for combat.

This review covers the 2nd Volume of the “Polish Armored Trains 1921-1939” by Adam Jonca. This volume is focused on the “1st Armored Train Group” as such, all their trains started with a number “1”.

The book has a chapter devoted to the peace-time bases and further split into chapters devoted to Train 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and a special Independent Draisine Platoon attached to the 1st Armored Group.

Each chapter then is further divided into sections for the Locomotive, Artillery Wagons, Assault Wagons (infantry transport), Combat Flat Cars, etc, as necessary for each train. For each section, you will find period pictures and color drawings, often showing 3 views of each type of railroad car or locomotive.

As to be expected, the Polish Armored Trains saw combat in the September ’39 campaign. All of them survived the initial assault and continued in service through the campaign, often providing artillery support for counter-attacks, in some cases engaging enemy armored units and even in a few cases launching night attacks on enemy bridge-heads.

This book is truly fascinating from a historical point of view, and inspirational from a modeling point of view. All the historical pictures, plus the 3-view full color drawings will get you looking into armored train models.

Highly recommended.

I would like to thank Casemate Publishers and IPMS/USA for the review sample.