In the _Railway Age Gazette_ (Chicago) for January 22, 1915, Mr. Frederick Hobart, associated editor of the New York _Engineer and Mining Journal_, writes, from personal knowledge, of two armoured cars which were in use in the Civil War. One of these, formed by heavy timbers built up on a flat car, was put together in the shops of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad Company at Newberne, N.C., in 1862, about two months after the city had been captured by the Burnside expedition. The armour consisted of old rails spiked on the outside of the planking composing the sides and front of the car. Along the sides there were slits for musketry fire, and at the front end there was a port hole covered with a shutter behind which a gun from one of the field batteries was mounted. The second car was similarly constructed, but was armed with a naval howitzer. The cars were run ahead of the engine, and were used in reconnoitring along the railroad line west of Newberne. Mr. Hobart adds that he was quite familiar with the cars, having assisted in the design and construction of both. In the _Century Magazine_ for September, 1887 (page 774), there is given an illustration ("from a photograph") of an armour-clad car described as "the Union Railroad Battery" which was, apparently, used in connection with the springing of the mine in front of Petersburg on July 30, 1864. The car is shown to have consisted of a low truck with, at one end, a sloping armour plate coming down almost to the rails, and having a hole through which the gun placed behind it on the truck could be fired. The sides of the truck were protected from the top of the sloping armour downwards, but the back was open. The car was, of course, designed to be pushed in front of the locomotive. Mr. L. Lodian, also, contributed to the issue of the American periodical, _Railway and Locomotive Engineering_, for May, 1915, a communication, under the title of "The Origin of Armoured Railroad Cars Unquestionably the Product of the American Civil War," in which, claiming that "our own Civil War" originated those cars, he said:--