Everybody seems to call trains 電車, but densha has the kanji for electricity.
As trains are older than electric trains, how where they called before they were electrified?
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汽車, steam train, is a vocab item on level 18
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列車 seems to be the most general term
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火車 is another word for 汽車, but it comes from Chinese (the logic being that you need fire 火 to burn the coal that creates the steam).
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Electricity is produced by power plants, and in Japan, 90% of electricity is still generated by fossil fuel (oil, natural gas, coal), which means that there is fire or heat involved in power plants. Therefore, to call a train 「火車」 is not exactly wrong 
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I love this response! I wonder how a Japanese person would react to it. (I mean, it’s also true that one of their ways of recycling plastic is by burning it as fuel for electricity, so it’s clear how much traditional power generation is still used in Japan.)
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間もなく１番線に列車を通過致します。危ないですから、黄色線までござり下さい。
（In a moment on track 1, a train will pass by. Since it’s dangerous, please stand behind of the yellow line.）
間もなく１番線に快速水戸行が参ります。危ないですから、黄色線までござり下さい。この電車は１５両です。グリーン車が付いております。グリーン車は４号車、５号車です。
（In a moment on track 1, a rapid service (train) in the direction of Mito will arrive. Since it’s dangerous, please stand behind of the yellow line. This train will have 15 cars. Green car is included. Cars 4 and 5 are green cars.）
So both 電車 and 列車 are being used for trains, I doubt that learning 汽車 will be of any use perhaps unless you plan on visiting a train museum.
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Shouldn’t this be が?
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Sometimes I hear を and sometimes I hear が for whatever reason.
I believe that が is the correct way, though.
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If the electricity is generated in a nuclear power plant, would the train be 原車? 
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The usages of を are so complicated that I think it is probably as correct as が here, but I couldn’t tell you why exactly…you can definitely use it with intransitive verbs in some cases though.
If the electricity is generated with a windmill, then it’s 風車, which is a word that means windmill… 
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Well what if the power came from a hydroelectric power plant? Do we use 水車 or 水電車?
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And what would a 牛糞車 be?
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I would say that a 牛糞車 is a stinky train if I ever smelled saw one…
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What if solar panels produce the electricity for the train? 太陽車？ソーラー車？光車？
So many possibilities! 
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If the electricity is generated with cow dung, it becomes うんち車
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In some situations, yes.
But not in most situations.
For example:
警察官が食べる→the police officer eats.
警察官を食べる→I eat the police officer.
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I think it’s because 参る means coming and going and is like 出る when it takes an を object. It’s marking a spatial reference.
For verbs of movement, including 参る and 行く, を can indicate a location that the movement passes through.
空を行く - to go through the sky
ジャングルを行く - to go through a jungle
So there’s no grammatical issue with を参る if the を is attached to something that can be a space to be travelled through… but it generally can’t just be swapped with が on the fly, because が needs to attach to the thing doing the moving.
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