Train Dominoes and Private Trains
If you have been searching for “train dominoes” or “the domino game with the trains” and not finding much, this is probably why: the game most people mean is called Mexican Train, and the trains in the name are the rows of dominoes each player builds. Here is what the different names refer to.
The names
| You might have heard | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Mexican Train | The standard name. Personal trains plus one shared train anybody can use. |
| Train dominoes | The same game, described rather than named. This is what people say when the proper name has slipped their mind. |
| Private trains | Usually the same game again, emphasising that your train is yours until it opens. Occasionally an older variant with no shared train at all. |
| Domino train game | Almost always Mexican Train. Occasionally Chicken Foot, which has branches rather than trains. |
They are not competing games with different rules. In practice they are four ways of pointing at the same thing.
What “train” means here
A train is simply a line of dominoes, laid end to end with matching numbers, growing outwards from the double in the middle of the table. Each player has one. It is called a train because that is what it looks like.
Your train is private: only you may add to it. If you get stuck — no legal play, and drawing does not help — it becomes public, and everybody else may play on it too, until you play on it again yourself and close it.
That single mechanic is what the game is built on. Keeping your train closed while other people’s open up is most of what winning looks like.
And the Mexican Train itself
On top of everybody’s personal train there is one more that belongs to nobody. Anyone may start it and anyone may play on it at any time. It is the game’s pressure valve, and it is where the name comes from — explained properly here.
The short version of the rules
- A double goes in the middle — the 12-12 in the first round, then the 11-11, and down.
- Everybody starts a personal train from that number.
- On your turn, play one matching domino: on your own train, on anyone’s open train, or on the shared train.
- Cannot play? Draw one. Still cannot? Your train opens and your turn ends.
- Someone plays their last tile and the round ends. Everybody else counts the pips left in hand.
- Lowest total after all the rounds wins.
That is genuinely the whole thing. The full version with the doubles rules and the variations is at how to play Mexican Train.
Where the private-train idea came from
Domino games with personal lines of play are much older than the name “Mexican Train”, which only became common in the 1990s. The older family — sometimes just called private trains, sometimes Cuban dominoes or a dozen regional names — has the same core: a shared starting double, a line per player, and the rule that your line is yours until you get stuck.
What the modern game added was the shared train in the middle. Without it, a player who cannot go has nowhere at all to unload and rounds grind. With it, there is always in principle a way out, which is why the newer version is the one that spread.
So if somebody in your family plays “private trains” with no shared train, they are not playing it wrong — they are playing the older game. The rest of it will be recognisable.
Things people expect that are not part of it
- Playing on other people’s trains freely. You cannot, unless their train is open or it is the shared one. This is the rule newcomers break most.
- Being able to draw as much as you like. Most tables draw one tile and then pass. Drawing until you can play is a variation, not the default.
- Highest score winning. It is the reverse: you collect the pips left in your hand and the lowest total wins.
- One long game. It is a series of rounds — one per double, counting down — with the scores carried forward.
Playing it online
If it is this game you were looking for, that is what this site is: Mexican Train with a double-12 set, two to eight players, free, no adverts and nothing to download. You play with people you invite by sending a six-letter code, not with strangers, and the board refuses illegal moves so nobody has to referee.
Two honest limitations. There is no computer opponent, so you need at least one other person. And there is no offline mode — it is a website, so it needs a connection.
Keep reading
- How to play Mexican Train
- What the Mexican Train actually is
- Chicken Foot dominoes
- How playing online works
This is the game you were looking for
Free, no adverts, nothing to download, and up to eight players.