Vintage Tram Car Paper Model

The printable template for this tram car is over 100 years old! It was produced in 1910 by Imagerie d'Epinal, a very prolific producer of paper models back in the day. A high resolution scan of the template may be downloaded from Kartonmodellbau.org, a German papercraft website. According to Kartonmodellbau, the model in the photo took 29 hours to construct! Of course, the builder took the extra steps of creating a base for the tram and replacing the paper windows with clear plastic. It should take you much less time. :)

Other Antique Paper Models:

Elephant Pagoda
Arc de Triomphe
Paper Anatomy Model
Steam Locomotive
Circus Merry-go-round

Japanese Railroad Paper Models

I am impressed by the shear quantity of the free papercraft available on the JR West website. There are dozens of models of Japanese trains available for download, everything from nineteenth century steam locomotives to modern day "bullet trains". And as if that was not enough, there are also train station paper models and railroad tracks to go with the trains. Pictured is just a sampling of all that is available. It takes some browsing to get to every piece in the collection, but it is well worth the effort. I am not sure of the exact scale of the models, but the railroad cars appear to be about 8" (20 cm) in length.

Related Papercraft:

Mister Rogers Red Trolley
Pullman Car
Mini TGV Engines
San Francisco Street Car
MLP Friendship Express

Ghost Train Papercraft

You may have heard of a ghost ship, but how about a ghost train? This phantom locomotive paper model comes from the spooky imagination of Ray O'Bannon at the Ravensblight website. Ray's backstory for the train is that it appears sometimes at midnight in a certain field where a railroad track once ran in days gone by. As with all the papercraft at Ravensblight, this makes a great Halloween decoration!

Other Scary Papercraft:

Origami Skeleton Hand
Mummy Paper Toy
Severed Zombie Head
Michael Jackson Thriller Head
Haunted Carousel

My Little Pony Train Papercraft

My Little Pony papercraft is on the rise! This build photo by deviantARTist Puffinrailsociety features MLP paper models by two different designers. The papercraft Friendship Express train is by RocketmanTan. The engineer pony and the conductor pony are by Satalite5. The smoke on the train is created with cotton balls (in case you couldn't tell ^^).

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood of Make-Believe Paper Models

The "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" is a pretend kingdom that appears in the children's television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Most of the inhabitants of the kingdom are hand puppets voiced by the show's host, Fred Rogers. When Texas musician Francis McGrath had trouble finding a papercraft version of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, he decided to create one himself. Shown in the lower portion of the photo above is the result of his efforts. Templates for each of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe buildings (plus a template for the familiar red trolley) are located at McGrath's web page here.

Pullman Railroad Car Papercraft

This easy-to-build Pullman railroad car paper model was designed by Lubbert Schenk of Holland. Pullman cars were luxury sleeping cars that contained amenities such as carpeting, draperies, upholstered chairs and washrooms. The Pullman Palace Car Company produced their cars from the 1860's through the 1960's. The template for the railroad car may be obtained by clicking on the image of the Pullman car on Mr. Schenk's webpage.

Miniature Paper Model TGV Trains

France's high-speed train service is known as the TGV. In 2007 a TGV test train set the record for the fastest wheeled train by reaching a speed of 357.2 mph (574.8 km/h). These mini papercraft models of TGV trains show some of the various paint schemes the trains sport. Free downloads of the templates for these and many other TGV trains are available from TGVweb.

San Francisco Street Car Paper Model

This San Francisco street car papercraft was created by Archidigm, a firm that provides training in computer-aided drafting. The process used to create the paper model involved importing digital photos of a street car into a drafting program (AutoCAD) where the features of the car were traced with lines. The resulting line drawing was then opened in Adobe Photoshop where color and shading were added. An outline of the steps to create the model (as well as a printable template for a green street car) may be found here.

Antique Papercraft Train

I couldn't find out much about the origin of this French antique papercraft train, but the style of the graphics have a definite 1930's flavor. The first page of the pattern for this locomotive announces that it is a "a real toy" with "easy assembly" and "no glue required". The picture above is a build photo by Patricia M. who runs the Agence Eureka blog. Patricia has the complete template for the train posted here.