A locomotive or train can play many roles in art, for example:

• As the main subject of a painting, sculpture, or photograph
• As a work of art in itself in addition to most functional considerations, especially in streamlined steam locomotives and luxury passenger accommodations of the early 20th century, known also as the Machine Age
• As a subject for a novel or film
• As a metaphor in song or poetry, particularly for physical power or directed movement (physical, romantic (phallic) or other), as in Fisherman's Blues:

"I wish I was the brakeman

on a hurtling, fevered train

crashing headlong into the heartland

like a cannon in the rain"

In 1978, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris held the exhibition "Les Temps des Gares" with the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the National Railway Museum in York, and the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.

In 2008, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery held an exhibition entitled: "Art in the Age of Steam."

The following list is in chronological order, oldest to youngest:

• Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, by J. M. W. Turner, 1844
• The Berlin-Potsdam Railway, by Adolph von Menzel, 1847
• Gnome Watching Railway Train, by Carl Spitzweg, 1848
• The Railway Station, by William Powell Frith, 1862
• The Travelling Companions, by Augustus Egg, 1862
• Lordship Lane Station, by Camille Pissarro, c. 1870
• The Railway, by Édouard Manet, 1872
• Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, by Claude Monet, c. 1877
• Le Pont de l'Europe, by Gustave Caillebotte, 1880
• Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley, by Paul Cézanne, 1882–1885
• The Lineman, by L A Ring, 1884
• States of Mind I:The Farewells, by Umberto Boccioni, 1911^[1]
• The Anxious Journey, by Giorgio de Chirico, 1913
• Railroad Sunset, by Edward Hopper, 1929
• Time Transfixed, by René Magritte, 1938
• Rolling Power, by Charles Sheeler, 1939^[2]
• Night Train (1947), Train in Evening (1957), Station in the Forest (1960) and The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (1968), by Paul Delvaux
• Horse and Train, by Alex Colville, 1954^[3]
• The Sources of Country Music, by Thomas Hart Benton, 1975^[4]
• Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train, by Jeff Koons, 1986^[5]
• Brick Train, by David Mach, 1997

In the United Kingdom the Guild of Railway Artists is a group of painters of railway subjects.

• Bridges in art
• Landscape art
• Marine art