June 1861

Near Atlanta, Georgia

With the large distances over which the war is being conducted, and the chronic lack of heavy artillery pieces within the Confederate Army, the decision was made to experiment with the attachment of certain artillery to locomotives in order to attain greater levels of mobility. While horse artillery allowed for smaller cannons to be transported around the battlefield going back to the Napoleonic Wars, this has not been the case for larger mortars or howitzers. With the need to attack Union fortifications and cities in the future, an innovative solution was needed.

Under the direction of Chief Engineer Colonel Jeremy Francis Gilmer, a team of Confederate engineers assembled to create what they called the “mobile battery”. The mobile battery consisted of a 7 inch Brooke rifle mounted on a flat rail car. A casement was built around the gun with wood and iron, resembling the gun bay of a gun deck on a naval ship.

Initial testing was conducted to test the structure of the casement and to limit the effect of gun recoil. The breaks of the flat car were deemed to be sufficient to absorb the recoil of the gun. The major limitation of the mobile battery is its need to be pointed along the axis of the railway toward its target.