Polish Armored Trains 1921-1939, Volume 3
Beyond expectations!
Everybody loves a trainwreck, right? And yes, this book ends with trainwrecks, but in a very good way. We all know how it ends – with duty, honor, courage, defeats, little victories, explosions, derailments, disaster – after all, it does end in September 1939 with the German invasion outcome. But from 1921 to 1939, it chronicles the continued saga of national defense after the Poles kicked invading Russians out against all odds, using armored trains as mobile artillery and troop transports, until these trains became one of the first victims of blitzkrieg. This book is jam-packed with such detail, photos, illustrations, maps, and color plates (by the author) there is almost zero open white spaces and not much text. A quick read, and with all the visual content, you’ll spend hours being transported to what life was like on Polish war trains. A bonus – you’ll learn train lingo too.
This book is Part 3 of a massive catalog of Polish armored trains – how they were organized, how they trained, how they operated, their strengths, their weaknesses, exactly how they looked, their training, their crews and their brief but active service until destruction or surrender.
This book is a labor of love by Adam Jonca, joining Volumes 1 & 2 to be the ultimate authority on Polish war trains. Even though this topic sounds mundane, it is utterly fascinating – a perfect book to change out of your regular reading rut and lose yourself in a book like before computers and personal devices.
You will not see any kits of these anachronistic machines from all the major model companies, but this book is perfect for model train enthusiasts, also, armor diorama builders looking for unusual subjects, and gaining attentions from judges and onlookers at model contests by merging armor with train sets. Adam Jonca has delivered a masterpiece of history as escapism. You can almost hear the steam hissing, the smell of oil and sweat and fear, and know what it was like to be in Poland at that time.
My thanks to Helion and Casemate Publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

Reviewer Bio
Luke R. Bucci, PhD
Luke built all kinds of models starting in the early '60s, but school, wife Naniece, and work (PhD Clinical Nutritionist) caused the usual absence from building. Picked up modeling to decompress from grad school, joined IPMSUSA in 1994 and focused on solely 1/700 warships (waterline!) and still do. I like to upgrade and kitbash the old kits and semi-accurize them, and even scratchbuild a few. Joined the Reviewer Corps to expand my horizon, especially the books nobody wants to review - have learned a lot that way. Shout out to Salt Lake and Reno IPMSUSA clubs - they're both fine, fun groups and better modelers than I, which is another way to learn. Other hobbies are: yes, dear; playing electric bass and playing with the canine kids.
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