Trotsky's train was the personal armoured train of Leon Trotsky, the Soviet People's Commissar of Defense. In 1918 Trotsky had a train that was formerly used by one of the Czar's ministers of communication converted into an armored train for him to quickly visit areas in the Russian civil war where the Red Army needed leadership. The train included a telegraph station, a library, a printing house, a radio station, an electric power station, a squad of picked sharpshooters and machine gunners, and an automobile garage.