Steam train

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

That's actually what I meant. If you're adding armaments to existing train cars, it's difficult to do it well. A train is long and usually has lots of windows in the passenger areas.

Also, it doesn't have much armor. Though the cars might have enough to be of use against pistols, if the windows are taken care of. I don't know.

Against small arms stacking sandbags up the insides of the walls will work quite well as a quick means of adding armour.

Given more time attaching sheet metal to the sides (including skirts to protect the running gear) is pretty straightforward. Remember, for trains adding weight to passenger cars isn't going to affect it much unless you've only got a small engine intended to light passenger trains.

One thing to remember is that trains weren't really that fast, but they could go constantly. (sort of)

It depends on what you mean by 'not that fast'. For most of their history they were at least as fast as other means of land transport (horses, carriages, early cars on less than great roads), and were more reliable than most.

The big vulnerability of an armed and armoured train is of course the tracks - remove a section of track or seriously warp it and the train is stopped, possibly catastrophically if it didn't notice the break in time and ran into it.

[Phil Masters]

Yeah. Armouring a train to badass fighting vehicle levels should be entirely feasible. But in the end, if the enemy can get a couple of guys onto the track with a barrel of black powder or crowbars and an uninterrupted half-hour to work, or can zero artillery onto it, then all the armour in the world isn't going to get your train anywhere.

And stopping civilian trains on regular runs is often easy. Change the signals to red by hand.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

It's not that terribly difficult, both World Wars featured armed
Trains. It's usually not very helpful, though.

The biggest weakness of an armed train is that it's just as rail-bound as an unarmed one, so an enemy willing to strike the rails can immobilize or destroy it without having to fight it. Though that's more useful if the attackers don't mind destroying the train.

Originally Posted by Dexion

Of course I thinking to put some trunks or rocks on the rails, but it easy to clean the way with lots of peoples to do the job and some watchers with guns.

If you've stopped the train to clear or repair the tracks ahead you may be on guard, but you're also stopped. Keeping the train from running away is the only really distinctive problem of trying to capture a train.

Basically, all you need to waylay a train is the standard bandit barricade: block the road and set up all your shooters to cover where the target will have to stop.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Basically, all you need to waylay a train is the standard bandit barricade: block the road and set up all your shooters to cover where the target will have to stop.

Why stop the train? Let it crash and take care of some of those defenders for you. Just mine the tracks, or perhaps the obligatory trestle bridge. You can always pick out the gold bars from the wreckage later.

GMs are going to need some fragile MacGuffins if they want to avoid complete mayhem.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Just mine the tracks, or perhaps the obligatory trestle bridge.
...snip...
GMs are going to need some fragile MacGuffins if they want to avoid complete mayhem.

As a GM, I'd make accessing sufficient blasting explosives a mission in itself.

As a former railway signaler, my first thought is in regards to the implications of the damaged rail line and/or bridge. The train may be looted etc, but what was once a transportation route is now a dead end. And that's going to **** off a lot of folks.

My two pence worth of firewood.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Why stop the train? Let it crash and take care of some of those defenders for you. Just mine the tracks, or perhaps the obligatory trestle bridge. You can always pick out the gold bars from the wreckage later.

GMs are going to need some fragile MacGuffins if they want to avoid complete mayhem.

The OP specified capturing a train intact, but certainly if you drop that requirement orchestrating a wreck is a good way to do it. And you probably don't even need explosives, you should be able to simply sabotage the tracks such that they'll fail and cause derailment.

Lots of reasons you might not want to though. As Luke Bunyip notes, that's a pretty serious piece of destruction, though if you didn't destroy a bridge in the process the track damage chould be a fairly fast fix. Point is, you might draw more heat for mass murder and major destruction of property and infrastructure than just for some armed robbery. Or you're trying to kidnap a passenger and they're no good to you dead.

Or in weird RPG stunts maybe you really are trying to steal the train itself. Usually that doesn't make a lot of sense, because anywhere you can take it is somewhere its owners can readily follow. Maybe if you're planning to use it to sneak past a checkpoint, or to ram a terminal...

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

It is difficult to really arm a train, but they might do this in a post-Apocalyptic scenario.

In the post-WW2 era they're rare but before that they manage to fill the 528 pages of Armoured Trains by Malmassari.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Dexion

I'm looking for the stats of a steam-powered train like in cowboy movies for a post-apocalystic scenario. In which book can I find it? I look in HT but nothing.

And I looking for some advices/ideas of customise it for defenses and tactics to take possession of the train without destroy it ?

Of course I thinking to put some trunks or rocks on the rails, but it easy to clean the way with lots of peoples to do the job and some watchers with guns.
I don't need solutions with mutants/zombies or things like this because it's a Mad Max like scenario.

Have a read of Cherie Priest's Dreadnaught, it's got big armed trains in a steampunk setting.

[Inky]

If you're looking for ideas about things that might happen to a train going through the wilds, and how people might attempt to defend themselves against them, there's the train journey from San Francisco to New York in Around the World in 80 Days. It covers several chapters, and fully lives up to the title of one of them:
"IN WHICH CERTAIN INCIDENTS ARE NARRATED WHICH ARE ONLY TO BE MET WITH ON AMERICAN RAILROADS".

[YankeeGamer]

The challenge with a train is the tracks. One adventure for the old Twilight 2000 game had people traveling across the ruins of Poland in a steam train. Among other things, it was necessary to have a few cars with materials to repair the tracks. (At one point, we had to resort to pulling up track behind us to lay track in front of us, as the existing rails had been taken by locals to build an ironclad.)