Railroad Plough

A railroad plough is a rail-mounted vehicle carrying an immensely strong hook-shaped plough, lowered onto the track and hauled by a locomotive to tear up wooden ties and bend steel rails out of alignment, wrecking a railway line so a retreating army denies its use to a pursuing enemy. Rail-destruction equipment of this kind was used by the Russian Imperial Army during its retreat from Galicia and Poland in the First World War, by the Czechoslovak Army in 1938 during the German occupation, and by German forces retreating through Italy and on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. It is a distinct device from the improvised rail-destruction tactic known as Shermans neckties, used by Union forces in the American Civil War.