This, already relatively late photo, shows, obviously, not the first version of an armored vehicle built by Zamoskvoretsk trams during the battles for power in Moscow during the 1917 Revolution. Unfortunately, no photos of the first model have survived, but this tram also managed to make war, though as a transporter, not a combat vehicle.
Why do I think this is not the first option? Because in the course of research on the topic I came across a rather detailed description of the really first combat tram, which entered the battle, literally in the first hours of the October Uprising. As it is described in the book "Guards of October: Moscow" (Moscow, 1967), in the part concerning:
… The armored car rolled through Moscow almost without noise, without lights, stopping for a short while, giving Pavel Karlovich Sternberg the opportunity to listen to the fragile silence of the night and make notes in his notebook.
The idea to equip a tram protected from bullets dawned on Mikhail Vinogradov just before the uprising. He brought Sternberg to the hotel "Dresden" a sheet with simple drawings and a drawing of an armored car, on board which he wrote his favorite line: "I stand for the truth until the last!" Pavel Karlovich smiled, remembering the words of the dashing merchant Kalashnikov, hid the drawings in his pocket with a vague hope - maybe they will come in handy. Apakov, to whom Sternberg showed a leaflet with Vinogradov's calculations, became interested: - Let's estimate.
There were not enough armor plates in the Zamoskvoretsky tram fleet, barely enough for the driver's cab. They thought and wondered and replaced the armor with wooden frames, covered the piers with sand, tried it: the bullet does not take! At the suggestion of Sternberg, a rotating wheel was installed inside, a machine gun was fixed on it. So the "armored car", as its creators dubbed it, was born, not being very embarrassed by the fact that the role of armor had to be entrusted to 50-millimeter boards.
model of Zamoskvoretskaya armored rubber
Near the Crimean bridge, someone was giving light signals from an attic dormer. The red lantern blinked nervously. He blinked now more, now less often, then faded away, so that after a minute he would send again disturbing signals into the darkness of the night.
- Shall we hit? Apakov asked.
- Hit! - agreed Sternberg.
One could hear how the wheel creaked and turned, and at once the car was filled with steel tremors; the booming echo of a machine-gun burst swept through the air and broke off. The dormer in the attic was hopelessly blind. The red pupil of the lantern has obviously gone out forever …
The armored car stopped at Smolenskaya Square. Lights shone brightly in a large house on the side of the Arbat. Enemy observers announced the area with sharp, shrill whistles. Shots rang out from the cellars, from the attic of the building dominating the intersection, the fire of "Maxim" cut the air. The rest of the night, blown up, awakened by indiscriminate firing, as if it did not exist. The stray bullets clattered against the armor cap, drummed on the wooden lining of the tram.
So at least two armored cars were built - a wooden one with a Maxim machine gun, and this one, in the photo, with metal armor, but without its own weapons. Behind the levers of the first sample stood Pyotr Lukich Apakov, after whom the Zamoskvoretsky tram park was later named, about the commander of the second option, alas, there is no information, however, maybe he also drove. The armored cars did not play any key role in the battles, but served as a connecting link that united the disparate detachments of the Red Guards into a centrally controlled and unified operating force, breaking through the enemy-controlled areas with a load of weapons, ammunition, and with a landing party too.
