What A Way To Go

By J.D. Reed

Psyches unravel. Odysseus and Chevy Chase become role models. Marriages crack. And the kids? Don't ask. It's summer-vacation time. The skies are jammed, the interstates gridlocked. Getting there demands endurance, adrenaline and maybe a good lawyer. Hardened travelers know the holidays do not really begin until they arrive at their destinations -- and the luggage is finally found.

But these days a growing number of savvy vacationers are leaving the car in the garage and bypassing the airport. They are going in style, taking scenic and luxury train trips on which the fun -- and a bit of fantasy -- begins with the venerable two-tone cry "All abooo-ard!" Recreational rail travel is on a roll. Some 4.8 million passengers toured the country on specialty trains last year, in contrast with 2 million riders ten years ago. The attractions can include unspoiled panoramas, relaxed atmosphere -- with someone else in the driver's seat -- comfortable sleeping quarters and lively service.

No matter what the setting or the destination, there is a special drama about a train. The rules of the everyday are suspended, moments are easily shared. Observes Kenan Lott, operations manager of the Houston-to-Galveston Texas Limited: "People get on board thinking that two hours will be too long. But by the time they get off, they're old friends."

Mesmerized by the clickety-clack of wheels on track, you have time to dream. You can find yourself or lose yourself as the cars rock along. Hollywood has long understood the state of suspended animation on the tracks. It has used the train to evoke adventure, mystery and romance in films like Orient Express and North by Northwest.

Nostalgia is a great magnet for the iron horse, as is curiosity for a generation that grew up speeding down the interstates and making bicoastal parabolas at 30,000 ft. A train ride is a visceral excursion into history. You can hear, if you listen carefully, the hiss of escaping steam, the chime of crystal goblets and the rustle of starched table linens. You can see, if you open your mind's eye, a lone Navajo saluting the Super Chief as it pulls into Albuquerque; buffalo racing alongside the Empire Builder in Montana. On board there are movie stars and Senators, Vanderbilts and Astors dining on fresh- caught trout.

Today that quality is mirrored on some private lines. The Napa Valley Wine Train, which rolls sedately through some of the best wine country in the U.S., serves elegant meals accompanied by wines from the vineyards that it passes, including Domaine Chandon and Grgich Hills. California-based Sentimental Rail Journeys offers vacation packages in restored vintage and Pullman cars that are attached to Amtrak trains, complete with porters skilled in turn-of-the- century attentiveness. Sample fare: $565 a person for a four-day San Francisco excursion. Michigan's Shiawassee Valley Railroad provides drama at a more modest price: for $55, a traveler on its Murder Mystery Train can watch a whodunit performed by a professional theater group as the cars roll from Chesaning to St. Charles.

Not all rail rides are luxurious. On Amtrak, the national line, the amenities are fewer and the service spottier. The food may be microwaved mediocrity. In the aging coaches, the decor runs to implausible orange and tepid yellows, the odor is museum quality. A $274 sleeping compartment on Amtrak's Cardinal, from Chicago to New York, manages ingeniously -- and torturously -- to cram sink, toilet, passenger seat, closet, water cooler, trash can, storage compartment and shoe locker into a space about 4 ft. by 7 ft.

But whether the accommodations are cramped or commodious, on every railway a different America floats past the window. The paths of trains are like those roads that author William Least Heat Moon called "blue highways," the forgotten byways that lead into the heart -- and the soul -- of the country. Such a trip unreels a documentary about smokestack America that pans across abandoned factories, stockyards, waste dumps and prisons. It is also a voyeuristic voyage more real than Roseanne, crazier than A Current Affair. For the train catches the nation in its undershirt, unguarded in its backyard after work, quarreling amid rusting engine blocks, scrawny chickens and mail- order guitars. But a train trip is more. It provides a window on majestic nature that is often inaccessible by other means. That's not Busch Gardens out there in the Alaskan outback, nor are you riding past the robotic ape at a theme park. Those are real moose in rut careening toward the train, real bears, mountains and mud slides on the other side of the window. Elsewhere, American rails wander beside breathtaking canyons, mountain ranges and waterfalls. So, wherever you're headed, climb aboard this summer. The experience will help put you back on track.

With reporting by Lee Griggs on Anchorage-Fairbanks Express, S.C. Gwynne on the Cardinal and Richard Woodbury on the Texas Limited