Freight Train Coloring Page

This freight train coloring page shows a whole rail yard at work. Two tracks run across the page. The front one has a blue diesel engine pulling a coal hopper and a red boxcar. The back one holds a caboose, a boxcar, a round tank car and a flat car stacked with two containers. Above them you see tall grain silos, two smokestacks and a yellow crane lifting a container.

It is one of the busier pages in this set, so expect close to an hour. Ages six to twelve will get the most from it. You can also split it over two sittings, one for each track.

Real railroad colors

Freight cars come in plain, tough colors. Boxcars are often rusty red or brown. Hoppers tend to be gray or black, because coal dust hides on them. Give the tank car a bright color so it stands out from the plain cars around it.

The containers are your chance to go wild. Shipping boxes come in red, green, blue and orange from many different owners, so no two have to match. Try making the stack in the bottom corner match the ones on the flat car.

Keep the ground a dusty tan and the gravel gray. Quiet colors in the yard make the train pop. The silos can stay pale gray with a red roof on the building above them.

Tips for this freight train coloring page

• Work from the top down, so your hand does not smear the finished parts.
• Use one color for all the wheels and trucks. It ties the two trains together.
• Fine tip markers work well on the vents along the diesel.
• Color the pebbles in small groups, not one at a time, or you may run out of patience.

Thin printer paper can curl under heavy marker. A sheet of card stock holds up much better for a drawing this full.

Stuck on the rail yard floor? Scribble it in tan with a crayon tipped on its edge. Then drop in a few gray dots for gravel. It takes two minutes, and the whole lower half of the page suddenly feels finished.

What each car carries

Every car here has a job, and kids like to learn them. A boxcar is a closed box for general goods, the sort of load you want to keep dry. Hopper cars haul loose cargo such as coal, ore or grain. Look at the three slanted chutes under the hopper in this drawing. Real ones open at the bottom to let the load pour out.

Tank cars carry liquids and gases. Flat cars are open, which makes them good for heavy or bulky things. This article on rail freight explains more about these cars and the steel containers that ride on them. Those containers move most of the packaged goods shipped around the planet, and in the United States they often ride two high.

Yard games

Play freight manager. Ask your child what should go in each car: toys in the boxcar, juice in the tank car, popcorn in the hopper. Write the answers on the side of each car in pencil before coloring over them lightly.

Counting works too. How many wheels can you find on the front train? Teachers can turn this into a short math problem, since each truck has the same number of wheels.

Older kids may enjoy sorting. Make a chart with two columns, liquid and solid, and place each load where it belongs. It takes five minutes and fits nicely after a unit on matter.

More working trains

This freight train coloring page sits with our train coloring pages. See the same kind of engine up close on the diesel locomotive sheet, or park it next to a big rig from the truck page.

Questions