1884: 40 Pound Armstrong BL Gun on a Brighton 20 Ton Wagon

In the last half of the nineteenth century there was much public discussion in Victorian military journals about planning a railway network so that in time of war it could be used offensively to protect cities and the coast. One proposal was for a circular railway line around London for troops and artillery to be moved quickly to areas under attack. Other suggestions were to build or re-route lines close to the coast, from which railway guns could fire at ships or troops landing on the beaches. At this time all European nations were spending millions on fortifying their borders. One of the arguments advanced in Britain was that mounting guns on railway trucks would be less costly and more flexible than building extensive coastal fortifications, which might tum out to be in the wrong place.

On 8 April 1847 an inventor, Sir James Caleb Anderson from Cork, had applied to HM Chancery in Edinburgh for several patents, one of which was for long 32- pounder guns to be mounted on iron ordnance trucks which ran on rails. Two years later he prepared plans and estimates for guns so mounted to travel on railway lines close to the coast in Southern England. The Duke of Wellington who was Commander-in-Chief of the army saw these and was lukewarm about the idea which was to have cost more than £1 million. The experienced General Burgoyne who had responsibility for all the fortifications in the country dismissed this and similar proposals as impractical. In his view a few determined men with dynamite could easily put a railway line out of action. There was also no enthusiasm and downright obstruction from the Admiralty and War Office who were already committed to an expensive program of fortifying the naval ports.

It was not until 1894, with private funding and cooperation between senior officers of the 1st Sussex Artillery Volunteers and the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, that the first working railway mounted gun carriage was designed and built at Brighton. It was to be used to give mobile artillery support to those defending the coast in the event of an attack. An Armstrong rifled breech-loading field gun was available from the near derelict fort at the mouth of Shoreham harbor. Adaptations were made to a 20-ton railway flat wagon at the Brighton railway works and the field gun with its carriage wheels intact was mounted on a turntable. To protect the crew they were enclosed in a steel tank-like structure with sides 1.8m high and 12mm thick. This clumsy contraption was anchored to the ground by cross girders and grapnels when the gun was fired but the turntable enabled it to be pointed in all directions.

During the next few years the gun train took part in military exercises with the Sussex Artillery Volunteers at Newhaven, Arundel, and Sheffield Park in Sussex, and on the Elham Valley line in Kent. Near Newhaven harbor twelve rounds were fired a mile offshore into Seaford Bay.

Influential members of the establishment including generals and admirals were present at the demonstration, but the War Office never took up the idea and little was heard of it after 1900. At this time the Royal Navy was the most powerful in the world. Since 1860 priority and resources had been given to sustaining its superiority and making its harbors impregnable. It was not conceivable that an enemy could pose a serious threat to the British coast, which could not be defeated.

An Armstrong gun was a uniquely designed type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy gun designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured in England beginning in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Such guns involved a built-up gun construction system of a wrought-iron (later of mild steel) tube surrounded by a number of wrought-iron strengthening coils shrunk over the inner tube to keep it under compression.

Above: The front of the gun truck with the gun aperture and wheels allowing the turntable to traverse 360 degrees

Lord Charles Beresford fires the Sussix railway gun in 1894

Two locomotives to push the gun truck along (above) and coaches for ammunition (below), stores and accommodation were also built in the 1890s at the Brighton works. The engines were designed by Robert J. Billinton and were Class D3 0-4-4 tank locomotives numbered 363 and 375. The gun truck had to be at the front of the train which caused some objections to be raised as strict Board of Trade regulations of the time stipulated that rolling stock had to be pulled and not pushed from the rear.