Steampunk Review:

The Landships of Lincoln – The story of Lincoln's part in the creation of the Worlds first fighting tanks. (Sn Ed) By Richard Pullen Published in 2007 ISBN 9781873257791
With SteamPunkers looking to arm themselves with a pistol or rifle for personal protection or for piracy but oddly not war! This should inspire your imagination.
'The Landships of Lincoln' chronicling the William Foster & Co Ltd military vehicles, and the engineers behind them, with interviews from the factory workers and those that visited the works. This is not a book about those people that imagined in theory the invention of the Tank, like the predictions of H. G. Wells in the early 'Boar War' of the concept of 'Land Ironclads', no this is about engineers and designers of an armoured trench crosser(necessity being the mother of invention), a weapon that could end the war.