to the track. This system was usually combined with cradle recoil because the springs of the trucks cannot withstand the vertical component of the recoil force alone. This type of mount was usually fitted with car-traverse. It was unsuitable for smaller guns due to the lack of traverse. The great advantage of this method is that it requires minimal preparation and can fire from any suitable section of curved track. The methods were often used in combination with each other. Examples include the French railway howitzer which used cradle-sliding recoil. The Americans' 14"/50 caliber railway gun Mark II used cradle-rolling recoil as did the 14 and 12 inch railway guns from Great Britain. Only the oldest weapons used a combination of top-cradle and sliding recoil. One example being the earliest mounts for the British designed BL 9.2 inch Railway Gun. Anchorage The combination of rolling and cradle-recoil methods absorbed both the horizontal and vertical components of the recoil force and needed no special preparations, but all other types required some method to transmit the vertical force to the ground. One way is to build a platform on either the ties or the ground with girders, beams, pads or floats. The horizontal component would be alleviated by either sliding recoil or rail clamps, guys or struts to secure the mount in place. The French Schneider and mounts and the British 9.2 inch guns and 12 inch howitzers used rail clamps or guys. The American gun and the French 240 mm Canon de Mle 1893/96 M used struts. The other method is build a firing position and recoil pit (épi de tir in French) underneath the tracks, using either heavy timbers like the French and howitzers or an elaborate concrete or steel base. These latter were mostly used by the Germans for the and larger railway guns and by the French for their Batignollesmounts. Generally, for these emplacements the rails merely served to guide the gun into position and the gun was often mounted on a central pivot to allow up to 360° of traverse. The primary drawback of these positions was the lengthy time to build them. History 19th century The idea of railway guns was first suggested in Russia in 1847 by Gustav Kori (proposal), followed by Ye. Repin (project, 1855), Pyotr Lebedev (who outlined the theoretical foundations of the railway artillery in Primeneniye Zheleznykh Dorog k Zashite Materika, 1857)