Train Coloring Pages

Trains reward a child who likes detail, and these free printable train coloring pages are drawn for that child. A steam engine has a funnel, a smokebox door with a handle on it, a boiler with bands round it, connecting rods and spoked wheels, and getting those right is the whole pleasure. Every engine in this set has them.

The scenes are as much about the railway as the train. An arched viaduct over a river with two people rowing below. A tunnel mouth in a fern-covered cutting. A turntable inside a roundhouse of stalls. A signal box on stilts with a signalman working a row of levers while an engine passes underneath. A platform under a hanging clock with luggage trolleys waiting.

These are busy sheets, and that is on purpose

Worth saying before you print for a four-year-old: this is a detailed collection. Almost every page carries a track, a background and a piece of machinery, so the fastest sheets here are still slower than the fastest in most other collections. The rounded ones exist and they are the ones to reach for: the smiling tank engine with a face on its smokebox, the toy engine pulling a wagon of soft animals, the wooden train set on a rug.

Lots of detail above the grid keeps the dense end and opens on the busiest page of all.

• A signal box above a passing engine
• A turntable inside a roundhouse
• An underground train at a tiled platform

The footplate is the one to keep for an evening: gauges, levers, pipes, the open firebox door and a shovel of coal, all in separate small shapes.

Colors that make a steam engine look like metal

• The boiler is not black. Dark green, maroon or dark blue, with black kept for the smokebox at the front, the funnel and the frames underneath.
• Leave a thin strip of bare paper along the top curve of the boiler. That is the light on polished metal, and no pencil will do it better.
• Wheels: color the spokes and the rim separately, with the gaps between the spokes left dark. It is fiddly and it is what makes the engine look heavy.
• Steam and smoke stay white. Color the sky around them in pale blue or gray instead.
• Rails go rust-brown, sleepers gray-brown, and the ballast between them left almost bare with a few stones picked out.
• Brass: the dome, the lamps and the nameplates take yellow with a touch of orange, and they are the only bright things on most of these pages.

Inside the train

A few sheets go indoors, and they are the ones adults tend to keep. A dining car with tables laid down both sides, cloths and cutlery and lamps on the panelling. A sleeping compartment with two made-up bunks and a trunk on the rack. A ticket hall with a glazed window, a bench and a potted plant under a hanging lamp. A refreshment trolley with an urn, stacked cups and a dome of buns, waiting on a platform under brick arches.

A frieze that runs round the room

A train is the one subject that keeps going sideways, and finished sheets can be joined end to end in a way a single animal never can.

Print the engine, then the coaches, then the goods wagons. Color them, cut each one out along the bottom of the wheels, and tape them in a line just above the skirting board. The line can grow for weeks: every new sheet is another wagon, and children who lose interest in a drawing halfway through will finish one if it is going to be coupled to the others.

Two refinements, for whoever wants them. Cut a strip of gray paper and run it under the whole train as track, with short dark sleepers drawn across it. And glue each vehicle to card before cutting, so the frieze survives being brushed past.

The model layout sheet does the same job on a smaller scale: colored, cut into its pieces and laid on a table, it becomes a plan for the real layout a child is about to ask for.

For something to keep rather than stick up, the footplate sheet is the one. Colored carefully, it holds its own in a clip frame, and it is the only page here that an adult will ask to have back.

The vehicle drawer holds the rest of the transport, the truck coloring pages go in the same pack, and the car coloring pages fill the road beside the line.

For a topic on transport

The set covers the history without a word of text on any page: a steam engine taking on water from a tower, a diesel and a steam engine standing side by side under a signal gantry, an underground train at a tiled platform, a high-speed train drawing into a glass-roofed station, and a monorail running on its beam above a park.

The vehicle coloring pages are the drawer this collection sits in, and the truck coloring pages go in the same pack for a wider transport set.

How a steam engine actually works

Children ask what the parts do, and the answer is unusually satisfying because every piece is visible from outside.

The fire heats water in the boiler. Steam collects at the top, under pressure. That steam is let into a cylinder, where it pushes a piston back and forth. The piston is joined to the wheels by the connecting rod, the long bar visible on the side of every engine here, so the back-and-forth becomes a turn. Used steam goes up the funnel, and it is that puff which draws the fire hotter, which is why an engine puffs harder as it works harder.

The funnel is exhaust. The dome on top of the boiler collects the driest steam. The sand boxes drop sand on the rails for grip. The cowcatcher on some engines pushes obstacles aside.

The water tower and the coal stage exist because an engine consumes both constantly and must stop to take on more, which is why so many of these sheets are set at a stopping point rather than in motion.

Knowing the connecting rod turns the wheels changes how a child colors it: it stops being a decorative bar and becomes the thing that makes the train go.

Printing

Each sheet is a free A4 PDF at 300 dpi, with no sign-up. Print at 100 % scale on A4, or choose "fit to page" on US Letter so nothing is cut off. Turn draft mode off: these drawings have a lot of fine line in them, and toner saving thins it to gray. The printing guide covers paper weights. Press Add to pack under each sheet you want and print the selection as one PDF.