Dinosaur Train

The Pteranodon family travels to a really big Theropod Club Convention.

Buddy and his family go to the city for the Theropod Club Convention.

From PBS KIDS - Dad takes the kids on a special Night Train to Troodon Town, where the Troodons have decorated their Roundhouse into a “haunted house” for a spooky party. The kids end up meeting a strange new nocturnal creature – a mammal named Vlad Volaticotherium, who was hiding in the roundhouse trying to get some sleep. The Pteranodon family learns more about the customs of their neighbors, the Lambeosaurus family, when they are invited for the first time to accompany them to the Big Pond to celebrate “Gourd Day” – a kind of Mesozoic Halloween. The kids see their first pumpkins, and Larry Lambeosaurus even shows our family how to hollow them out and carve faces into them.

From PBS KIDS - The Pteranodon family rides a special 'Night Train" to another part of the Cretaceous Time Period, where they meet a Troodontid "cousin" of the Conductor's, Sidney Sinovenator, who knows more about the stars than anyone. Sidney takes the family up to his favorite stargazing spot, "Starry Hill," and teaches the kids why the stars seem to move across the night sky. When the kids build their own version of a nest on the beach, below their actual family nest up on the cliff, they get the idea to turn their beach nest into a clubhouse. Shiny thinks that a clubhouse needs a club, and "the Nature Trackers" club is born! The kids decide to make their club about getting outside, getting into nature, and making new discoveries. The only problem is: which kid is in charge of the club?

From PBS KIDS - Shiny gets over her fear of snakes when Tiny challenges the Nature Trackers to meet the ultimate snake: the Sanajeh, a huge Cretaceous snake from what is now India. Dad takes the kids on the Dinosaur Train to find Sana Sanajeh, who may be huge, but turns out to be quite friendly. Once Shiny and Sana become friends, Shiny returns home with the knowledge that snakes aren’t scary – they’re just another part of nature. Tiny is horrified when her favorite buttercups all wilt, so Mom takes her and the family to the Big Pond, where she remembers seeing a whole lot of buttercups in bloom. On the way there, the Conductor gives the kids a visual lesson in “Nature’s Life Cycle,” explaining how a flower grows, blossoms, then wilts, and returns its seeds to the ground, to start the cycle all over again. Tiny finds her flowers at the Big Pond, both blooming and wilting, and can see nature’s life cycle in action.

From PBS KIDS - Buddy, an adopted T. rex, wishes he knew more about his T. rex ancestors. So, Dad takes him and Tiny on the Dinosaur Train back to the early Cretaceous, to visit an ancestor: an earlier version of Tyrannosaurus rex called Raptorex. Rodney Raptorex is a kid who won’t grow up to be as big as Buddy will, but the two boys find that they not only have a lot of differences, they have a lot in common, too. The kids are stuck cooped up in the nest for a long, rainy spell which leads to them fighting. Mom tells them that the rain has stopped enough that they can leave the nest – but she gives them an assignment: to go find their own “calm space,” where they can calm down enough to get along with each other again. It works – each kid finds something in nature that helps him or her to calm down and be friends again.