About these train coloring pages
Train coloring pages are a gift for every child who lines up wooden tracks across the living room floor or waves at the engineer from a crossing. Our free printable train pages include puffing steam engines with tall smokestacks, long freight trains with boxcars and tank cars, sleek high-speed trains, city subways and trams, little toy trains with faces of their own and cozy railway stations with clocks and platforms. Easy pages show one engine with thick lines; detailed pages have bridges, tunnels, mountains and whole railway yards.
Every page prints on US Letter or A4 paper, is free and needs no account, and carries no watermark. You can also color any page online with a tap-to-fill brush. Trains are wonderful for learning: kids can count the cars, put them in order from the engine to the last car, learn how steam pushed the wheels and find out how trains connected faraway cities.
Why kids love coloring trains
A train is a picture made of repeating pieces, and that is exactly what makes it fun to color. Each car can be a different color, so a long train becomes a rainbow, a pattern (red, blue, red, blue) or a lesson in counting. Children who love order and sorting enjoy deciding what each car carries: animals, logs, coal, mail or passengers.
Trains also carry a sense of adventure. Tracks go over bridges, through tunnels and across snowy mountains, so a train page invites a story about where the train is going. Little ones practice coloring big wheels and rectangles, while older kids can draw extra cars, add track switches or design their own station and timetable.
Types of trains on these pages
Use this list to pick a page or to quiz your child: can they tell a steam engine from a diesel or an electric train by its shape?
- Steam locomotive: a tall smokestack, a big round boiler and a coal car (the tender) behind it
- Diesel locomotive: a long boxy engine that pulls heavy freight trains
- Electric and high-speed trains: a pointed nose and wires or a power rail that bring electricity
- Freight cars: boxcars, tank cars, flatcars carrying logs and the caboose that once rode at the end
- Passenger trains and sleepers: rows of windows, seats and sometimes beds for night trips
- Subways and trams: city trains that run under the streets or along them
Train facts to share while you color
- The first public railway to use steam locomotives opened in England in 1825.
- A steam engine burns coal or wood to boil water, and the steam pushes pistons that turn the wheels.
- In 1869 the first railroad across the United States was finished in Utah, connecting the railroads of the East to the Pacific coast.
- The world's first underground railway opened in London in 1863.
- Japan opened its high-speed "bullet train" line in 1964, and today many countries have trains that run faster than 180 miles per hour (300 km/h).
- Maglev trains use powerful magnets to float just above the track, so their wheels do not touch the rails at high speed.
- On most railways in the world, the two rails are 4 feet 8.5 inches (1,435 mm) apart, a size called standard gauge.
- For many years American freight trains ended with a caboose where the crew rode, but most trains today no longer use one.
Which train page for which age
- Toddlers (2–3)
- Easy pages with one engine or a short train of two or three cars, big wheels and thick lines. Say "choo-choo" and count the cars.
- Preschool (3–5)
- Easy and Medium pages with a train, a station or a bridge. Color each car a different color and talk about first, second and last.
- Kids (5–10)
- Medium pages with tunnels, freight yards and mountain tracks. Add smoke, signals and passengers in the windows.
- Teens and adults
- Detailed pages with old steam engines, rivets, gears and landscapes. Try metal shading and soft grey steam clouds.
Coloring tips and color ideas
- Make each car a different color, or follow a pattern like red, yellow, blue, then repeat, for an easy math activity.
- Color the steam clouds very lightly in grey or leave them white and outline them softly in light blue.
- Steam engines look real in black or dark green with red wheels and shiny brass or gold trim.
- Color the rails grey and the wooden ties between them brown, then add green grass or grey gravel around the track.
- Draw faces in the windows so the passengers wave at whoever looks at the finished page.
- For a night scene, color the sky dark blue and leave the windows and the front light bright yellow.
Ideas for home, school and parties
- Train birthday party: print one car per guest, let each child color it, then tape all the cars in a long line along the wall.
- Number train: write 1 to 10 on the cars and let your child color and put them in order, or write letters to spell their name.
- Before a trip: color a train page before a real train ride, a railway museum visit or a ride on a small park train.
- Map activity: color a train, then draw a track on a big sheet from your town to a city you would like to visit.
- Make a page of your own train fan: turn a photo of your child at a station or playing with their train set into a coloring page. Upload it and Coloriki traces it in seconds.
How to print train coloring pages
- Open the page you like and press Print it. A PDF opens, sized for US Letter; the A4 PDF is next to it.
- In the print window choose "Fit to page" or 100% scale, and plain white paper. Thicker paper (100 to 120 gsm) is better for markers and paint.
- Print a few copies: kids like to try different colors on the same picture.
- Prefer screens? Press Color it online and color with a tap on a phone, tablet or computer.