Train Crazy Kids

If my toddler was on the Oscars voting rolls, he would have lobbied his peers until this video won an entire slate of awards. This is the Titantic, the Jurassic Park, the Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings of live action train videos. My toddler has memorized each frame of two of the four included videos: "Alphabet Train" and "I Want to be an Engineer", to the extent that he will actually call out what train will appear next at any given time. If this were 10 years ago and I owned it on VHS, I'd be on my third or fourth tape, because a couple would have snapped by now through overuse. The videos provide solid, commercial free content that will go a nice way to teaching your child the alphabet and the nuts and bolts workings of an important and interesting industry. I'd rather he watch this for hours over Miley Cyrus (no offense intended to the Cyrus family) or whatever else is on commercial TV these days. From a price perspective, you cannot go wrong here. If your child enjoys trains, he'll get four separate videos on the disk, each of which will hold his interest for its entirety. If you are a train enthusiast yourself, you'll notice a midwest and west coast bias to what is shown here. You won't see any Northeast corridor movements or Conrail sets (so no super fast Acela runs). You will get a lot of western landscapes and a good deal of transit movements in Seattle circa 2000 or so.

My preschool age grandchildren love this dvd. They have a large train set that they frequently play with and this video adds to their enjoyment. But this dvd goes even further...in the Alphabet Song they've learned to read all the train related words and Cho Cho Christmas, also a favorite, encourages discussion about weather and snow plows! Fun and educational video.

My four year old nephew loves trains....real trains, toy trains, wooden trains...well, you get the picture...he's crazy about trains! He has thoroughly enjoyed watching this dvd and learning all about real trains. He was rather amazed one had to study so much and so long to become an engineer. He told his grandmother..."I don't think I want to study that much...how much do you have to study to become a pirate?" He loves the dvd, however!

I must say the reviews were what led me to buy this dvd. My 5 year old eats, breathes, and sleeps trains. That being said he really only likes steam trains. He is coming around on diesel locomotives because he sees them up close at my work. However, he had no interest in this dvd. It could not hold his attention. The footage is just not very interesting. My son has outgrown Thomas, and has nearly outgrown his train table. He hates Chuggington as well. What my son asks to watch repeatedly is a show called "Trains and Locomotives." It comes on RFDTV channel 345 on directv. It is a show for railroad enthusiasts. Before buying this dvd you might want to record a couple of episodes of this. Like this dvd, neither are very good quality. Mostly shot from poor angles with bad lighting and poor image stabilization. I think what my son really enjoys about the tv show is that it spends a lot of time up close to the engines. You see all the steam and smoke and you here all the noises. The dvd shows you a lot of different trains but it doesn't get up close and personal with them. To truly keep a child's attention I think the dvd needed to do more of this.

My two year old is obsessed with trains!!! This was a great video to get us to Grandma's house. It's long, he loved it, and wasn't crying to get out of the car every 10 minutes!

I'm not gonna lie- I thought this was going to be dumb. There's terrible narration, it's slow and pretty boring, and there's a part called 'ABC train' that goes through the alphabet that's REALLY tedious but my 3 year old LOVES LOVES LOVES it. Asks to watch it all the time. He can sit through the boring 'ABC train' part like its the coolest thing ever and has really learned about trains, their parts, and the different kinds of trains. I guess I'm learning a lot too through repetition. Trust the other positive reviews of this DVD. I was more shocked than anyone that my kid loves it the way he does.

I bought this train movie for my 4 year old grandson, and he and I watched it together. He and I both really loved the whole movie, and the sound was fantastic from the trains, and all the information that we were given, made it well worth watching it many more times in the near future! I want a copy for myself!!!

My 4 year old grandson loves Thomas the Tank Engine and from that love came a love for all trains. He sometimes watches this over and over for hours and hours. It's just a bunch of documentary bits about trains, but it has captivated him and his 2 year old brother. The only criticism I could give is that there's one segment where a train engineer is explaining some fail-safe device. He says that if she should die while driving the train, that it would safely handle the train. I think the kids don't need to hear that a train engineer could suddenly die while driving a train. What were they thinking in not editing that out? But this doesn't keep these kids from being fascinated with the trains.