Before the nineteenth century, armies had to rely on slow and unreliable methods of transportation to move soldiers and equipment during times of conflict However, as Christian Wolmar demonstrates in this book, the birth of the railway in the early 1830s would transform the theatres of war 'Engines of War' spans more than a century and takes in all the engagements in which railways played a part, including the Crimean War, American Civil War, both world wars, the Korean War, and the Cold War - with its mysterious missile trains It shows that the 'iron road' not only made armies far more mobile, but also greatly increased the scale and power of available weaponry