Steam Train Coloring Page

This steam train coloring page puts one big engine right across the middle of the sheet. It has three tall driving wheels, a fat boiler, a flared smokestack and the number 27 on the cab. A coal tender rolls along behind it, and a long cloud of smoke stretches back over the whole sky. Behind the train you get a barn, a windmill, telegraph poles and snowy peaks. A child stands in the grass and waves.

Plan on thirty to forty minutes. Ages five to eleven do well with it. The smoke and sky are easy, while the wheels ask for a steady hand.

Colors for an old engine

Real engines were mostly black, but a coloring page does not have to follow that rule. Try a blue boiler with yellow bands and a red cab. Keep the front of the smokestack and the frame dark, since that gives the bright parts something to push against.

The two domes on top look great in gold or brass yellow. Paint the wheels red with dark rims, the way some fancy engines were painted long ago. Green suits the coal tender, and the coal itself can be a black or dark gray scribble.

Leave the smoke white and let the blue sky do the work around it. Shade the bottom edge of each puff with a light gray pencil, and it will start to look round.

Tips for this steam train coloring page

• Start with the wheels. Color the spaces between the spokes first, then go around the rim.
• Use a sharp colored pencil on the long rod, since it crosses all three wheels.
• Color the sky last, so you can stop neatly at the edge of the smoke.
• Press lightly on the far hills and hard on the flowers. Close things look stronger.

Younger kids can skip the telegraph wires and just color the poles brown. Nobody will mind.

How a steam engine moves

The boiler is a big tank of water with a fire at one end. Crews fed that fire with coal, coke or oil, and sometimes wood. The heat turns the water into steam, and the steam pushes a piston back and forth in a cylinder. A rod links that piston to the wheels, so the push becomes a spin. You can follow the path in this drawing, from the gray cylinder near the front along the white rod to the third wheel.

The car behind the cab is called a tender. It carries the water and the fuel, because a big engine uses both very fast. Even the whistle runs on steam. In 1804 a Welsh line saw the first known locomotive to pull a load over a distance, built by Richard Trevithick. You can read more in this short history of the steam locomotive.

Most of these engines left regular service by the 1980s, as diesel and electric trains took over. Some still run today on museum lines.

Play with the picture

Ask your child to trace the path of the steam with a finger before coloring. It starts in the boiler, slides down to the cylinder and ends at the wheels. That small game makes the rods feel like more than decoration.

Then try sound effects. Slow chuffs for a heavy start, quick ones once the train gets moving. Kids love to speed up as they color.

For a class, cut out the engine and line up everyone's trains along a wall. Each child can give the engine a number and a name for the town it visits. Older kids might write three lines about where the smoke is blowing and why.

Keep the train rolling

You will find this steam train coloring page with the rest of our train coloring pages. Next, try the close up train engine seen from the front, or the snowy Christmas train on its stone bridge.

Questions