diff --git a/examples/new_project_templates/lightning_module_template.py b/examples/new_project_templates/lightning_module_template.py
index b1ea9d9b..4d6a402f 100644
--- a/examples/new_project_templates/lightning_module_template.py
+++ b/examples/new_project_templates/lightning_module_template.py
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@ import torch
 import torch.nn.functional as F
 from test_tube import HyperOptArgumentParser
 from torch import optim
+from torch.utils.data import DataLoader
+from torch.utils.data.distributed import DistributedSampler
 
 from pytorch_lightning.root_module.root_module import LightningModule
 
@@ -154,13 +156,22 @@ class LightningTemplateModel(LightningModule):
     def __dataloader(self, train):
         # init data generators
         transform = transforms.Compose([transforms.ToTensor(), transforms.Normalize((0.5,), (1.0,))])
-
         dataset = MNIST(root=self.hparams.data_root, train=train, transform=transform, download=True)
 
-        loader = torch.utils.data.DataLoader(
+        # when using multi-node we need to add the datasampler
+        try:
+            if self.hparams.nb_gpu_nodes > 1:
+                train_sampler = DistributedSampler(dataset, num_replicas=self.trainer.world_size, rank=self.trainer.proc_rank)
+                print('using sampler')
+        except Exception as e:
+            print('no sampler')
+            train_sampler = None
+
+        loader = DataLoader(
             dataset=dataset,
             batch_size=self.hparams.batch_size,
-            shuffle=True
+            shuffle=True,
+            sampler=train_sampler
         )
 
         return loader
diff --git a/pytorch_lightning/models/trainer.py b/pytorch_lightning/models/trainer.py
index fdef6be9..bb63e35b 100644
--- a/pytorch_lightning/models/trainer.py
+++ b/pytorch_lightning/models/trainer.py
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ import torch.distributed as dist
 import os
 import subprocess
 from time import sleep
-from torch.utils.data.distributed import DistributedSampler
+
 
 try:
     from apex import amp
@@ -268,18 +268,6 @@ class Trainer(TrainerIO):
         self.test_dataloader = model.test_dataloader
         self.val_dataloader = model.val_dataloader
 
-        # when distributed data parallel, we need to distribute the dataset to each node
-        if self.nb_gpu_nodes > 1:
-            self.tng_dataloader = self.__distribute_dataloader(self.tng_dataloader)
-            self.test_dataloader = self.__distribute_dataloader(self.test_dataloader)
-            self.val_dataloader = self.__distribute_dataloader(self.val_dataloader)
-
-    def __distribute_dataloader(self, dataloader):
-        dataset = dataloader.dataset
-        dataset = DistributedSampler(dataset, num_replicas=self.world_size, rank=self.proc_rank)
-        dataloader.dataset = dataset
-        return dataloader
-
     # -----------------------------
     # MODEL TRAINING
     # -----------------------------