The Red Guards originally built these wagons around 1918 during the Finnish Civil War at the Fredriksberg Engineering Works in Finland. The base was a flatcar or “O-wagon”. The Reds built about a dozen armored artillery wagons with essentially the same appearance. They placed 1 or two artillery pieces and multiple machine guns per wagon, Finnish guns from the start but German types were used in later years.
During the Continuation war the Fins used these wagons again in war but scaled them down to two variants, a machine gun-wagon and kitchen wagon. The difference is that in the Kitchen Wagon the basic kitchen equipment installed and lesser machine gun positions. There is a variant with low wide open turrets for the use of anti-aircraft machine guns like the Finnish 7,62 ItKk/31 VKT anti-aircraft machine gun.
The rail cart in the photos is a Kitchen Wagon. Originally it was an open-top artillery wagon. It was built by Fredriksberg Works and armored for use with the Finnish Red during the Finnish Civil War in 1918.
Armored train 1 at Simola, artillery and kitchen wagon, armored Tk3 Locomotive – courtesy SA-kuva – 24854 CC BY 4.0Photo above shows Armored Train 1 at the railway station of Simola in July of 1941. The large artillery wagon visible in the forefront with its 40-mm Bofors gun is a 4-axle wagon. Behind it is the machine gun / kitchen wagon and an armored Tk3 type locomotive. The first wagon is a flatcar loaded with extra weight—in the form of wooden sleepers—to enable rail repairs.
