Steam power was really limited to the railroads, it wasn't sophisticated enough to put onto anything but railroads or ships. Tracks wern't invented yet. Artillery was still muzzle loaded. And there wasn't really an adacuate road system (why the railroads were so important).

You may want to look at this U.S. patent from 1859. The technology to create tracks was available before the civil war.

"The concept of a vehicle that carries, lays, and then picks up its own tracks had been around for years. In 1713, M. D 'Hermand, of Paris, drew a goat-pulled cart that ran on a treadmill of 26 rollers running on a belt. In 1770, Englishman Richard Edgeworth tried unsuccessfully to power a similar vehicle with steam. In 1825, Sir George Cayley won a patent for a wagon supported on an endless chain belt around the two wheels on either side. Unfortunately, he made no provision for steering, and it was soon forgotten. John Heathcoate of Great Britain built a steam plowing engine in 1832 that ran on two 7-foot wide belts. The engine weighed 30 tons and the belts were to keep it from sinking into marshland. Heathcoate's machine drew much praise -until it sank into a swamp and almost disappeared. Warren P. Miller, Marysville, Calif., demonstrated a tracked steam plow at the 1858 State Fair for which he won a cash prize, and a gold medal. According to the patent drawings, Miller's machine had most of the features used on later, successful crawlers, but for some reason, only one was ever built. George Minnis broke sod near Ames, Iowa, with a tracked steam engine in 1869 and, in 1871, a Philadelphia man, R.C. Parvin, demonstrated a crawler-type steamer at the Illinois State Fair. Parvin later started a company to build his machine, but it failed."

Sorry for forgeting to include the U.S. patent for a tracked crawler for you to see.

 

This excerpt is from my posting on a tank forum website last year. You may find the information interesting.

 

Found this very interesting article on the net at AmericanHeritage.com

Could you imagine building an Iron Steam Landship?

THE CIVIL WAR TANK
A World War I innovation was suggested half a century earlier
BY MIKE WRIGHT


ALMOST EVERY WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS inspired valuable innovations in military technology. The Civil War, for example, saw the first major use in the United States of rapid-fire weapons, land and naval mines, observation balloons, and ironclad ships, among other inventions. One of the most farsighted (if impractical) schemes of that conflict was devised in 1862 by an Indianapolis machine-shop owner named Albert E. Redstone. He proposed to build an armorclad, steam-operated ?engine of war?—what today would be called a tank.

The idea of a movable armored weapon was not new by any means. Judges 1:19 relates how Judah ?could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron,? and in 1482 Leonardo da Vinci designed a wood-armored chariot to be propelled by four men turning hand cranks.

The advent of steam power led to renewed proposals for armored war vehicles. One was designed in 1854, at the time of the Crimean War, but was never followed up, though a British patent was issued the following year. Then, on August 18, 1862, Redstone sent his plans to U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. With imperfect spelling, he called his invention the ?Anihilator.? Inspired by the newly launched ironclad warship Monitor, he described it as a ?land monitor.?

The crew would consist of two men, one to drive and one to shoot. The vehicle would be protected by two coats of iron armor with a gap in between. Glass windows would provide a view of the battlefield, and ?side knives? resembling sickles could be extended ?for cutting down infantry or Cavalry.? A 25-horsepower steam engine of Redstone?s patented design would provide propulsion.

Most innovative of all was the vehicle?s intended armament, a multiple-barrel Catling gun that would let the Anihilator ?run into the enemy lines & fire 5,000 shots in 5 to 12 minutes impregnable to the enemy?s assaults.? Richard J. Catling, inventor of the rapid-fire weapon that bears his name, had built his first prototype earlier that year at his shop in Indianapolis, and Redstone no doubt had seen or heard about its public demonstration there.

No reaction to Redstone?s letter survives, but it is doubtful the plan got much consideration. The Army?s chief of ordnance was the crusty James Wolfe Ripley, a War of 1812 veteran who shunned newfangled gimmicks, such as breechloading rifles. In June 1861 he had complained, ?A great evil now specially prevalent in regard to arms for the military service is the vast variety of new inventions.?

Could Redstone?s scheme have succeeded? Probably not. Even ignoring the unbearable heat that would have built up inside, Redstone?s projections of his tank?s capabilities were far from realistic. According to R. P. Hunnicutt, the author of Bradley: A History of American Fighting and Support Vehicles (Presidio Press, 1999), Redstone?s estimated weight of 1,800 pounds was ?very optimistic.? Moreover, because of its ?low ground clearance and a considerable overhang of the hull,? the Anihilator?s ?mobility would have been extremely limited.? Even a shallow ditch or hole would immobilize the vehicle completely.?

Not until early in the twentieth century did ?caterpillar? tracklaying technology, originally developed for farm tractors operating on marshy ground, begin to be applied to military vehicles. When combined with internal combustion, mass production, and improvements in weaponry, this advance finally allowed tanks to assume an important role in the later stages of World War I.

MIKE WRIGHT is the author of What They Didn?t Teach You About the Civil War (Presidio Press, 1999) and other books.

Maybe the best they (most likely the Union, as the Confederacy lacked significant industrial base) could've come up with would've been armored trains, early examples to some of those used by the Red Army and Nazi Germany during WW2.

 

The steam power was there.

The knowledge and ability to fairly quickly lay track was there (at least, "quickly" as would've been defined back in those days).

Quite a few larger cities and towns where battles were fought had at least minimal rail services; the only catch would've been luring the opposing armies to fight you on your terms, in close proximity to the armored train's line of fire.

(but then of course, early mines and IEDs along the rails and bridges could've severely hampered these armored trains' deployments to the battle lines...)

 

The knowledge of armoring the train was there, as we saw late Civil War with ironclad ships (although the need to provide defense against over 20 pound shot probably wasn't needed, most likely it could've gotten by being proofed againt 10 pound shot, maybe even only 4-6 pound, or just grapeshot-proof.

 

As to the guns: the USS Monitor managed the first turret guns, muzzle loaders that retracted after firing behind a cantilevered plate that shielded over the gun port when the gun was withdrawn for reloading.

 

Problem here is, there was no railroad gauge in existance that would've allowed a similar turret layout (even if only armed with two, or a single, 10-pound shot cannons).

 

A turreted gatling gun certainly had merit, late War.

Could've been quite useful reaching into the southwestern states post-War, also (kept the Mexican armies at bay, possibly changed the outcome of the Alamo if it had a railroad built to it...).

 

There were some instances of cannon (a few pics show a semi-fixed gun in a car pushed ahead of the steam locomotive), and especially moreso mortars, mounted on railcars during the Civil War, but without further researching it I don't know if they ever resulted in any turned-the-tide-of-battle victories that wouldn't have happened if the train wasn't there.

But to mount them under defensive armor plating is another story (short of maybe side and front plating to prevent against bullets and shrapnel, mounted on a revolving deck on the railcar, but not so much as a true fully-enclosed turret).

 

There's the possibility of a broadside battery arrangement akin to fighting sail, perhaps offering the guns some minimal independent swivel to compensate for the train car to otherwise have to rely on curved sections of track for slewing.

Problem there though is, do we only install the guns AC-130-style, only able to fire off one side,

or do we allow each gun its own turntable to swivel around and engage targets on the other side of the tracks,

or design one style of broadside railcar and mount them alternate-opposite each other: one car fires to the right of the tracks, the next car only to the left, then next car right, so on and so forth...?)

 

But in many instances there it may have provided little more than noise and nuisance value (and eat up valuable logistics better suited to actual towed artillery pieces of the era, that could actually be moved anywhere the battle was without solely relying on where the train tracks were lain).

 

There was more than one type of repeating rifle developed around that timeframe (Henry, Spencer),

that relied on encased catridges that loaded from the gun's breech instead of its muzzle,

as well as numerous pistol designs,

so the basic understanding of breech-loading weapons was there.

With more foresight (and another year or two longer for the War),

the possibility does exist that breech-loading cannon could've seen significant battle use late-War.

Advantage here goes to the Union and its superior industrial base,

unless the Confederacy gets help from the British inventing it first (or French, or Spanish, etc).

If that had happened,

then both turreted warships and turreted armored trains would've been more feasible in the closing battles of the Civil War.

We may even have gotten away with numerous shallow-draught river monitors that could've engaged water and shore targets along the Mississippi and other inland waterways...

 

But the technology just wasn't there to make a fully independent (independent of train rails) steam powered ground vehicle that could remotely have been the precursor to today's tanks (even with inspiration from da Vinci's ideas).

 

As fictionally impressive as the "tank" in Wild Wild West was, the technology just didn't exist in reality to make it work sufficiently successful enough to be a tactical asset (and the armor it would've had in those days would've been easily countered by numerous field guns firing solid shot, or even have adapted the first conical pointed-nose (think super-sized Minie ball ammunition, only with a more solid nose) armor piercing rounds that readily would've found their way into use aboard ships much sooner).