On the Right Track : ZEPHYR: Tracking a Dream Across America, <i> By Henry Kisor (Times Books: $24; 352 pp.)</i>

Reading “Zephyr” is not as much fun as actually riding Amtrak’s popular streamliner from Chicago to Oakland, but it will do until you get a chance to make the real trip. Kisor is your guide to the spectacular scenery and the auto junkyards along the way. He provides historical background: the Naperville, Ill., wreck, which killed 45 people in 1946; the spot in Utah where Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall Gang held up a train in 1897; Donner Lake, where a party of emigrants survived the winter of 1846 by resorting to cannibalism. He gives us a dissertation on private cars (yes, there still are a number of them, these days mostly leased out to tour groups) and introduces us to such legendary rail-fan figures as Lucius Beebe and Rogers Whittaker.

Yet, to paraphrase Wright Morris, a book can have a train in it but not be about a train; and while “Zephyr” is partly about Amtrak in the ‘90s, it is really about a good deal more. Kisor, who is book editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, has turned his train trip to California into a metaphorical journey into the heart and mind of America.

Kisor is deaf, but through lip reading and the assistance of various traveling companions he was able to talk at length with the people who ride the train and the people who run it. The result is a book about Americans as well as about America, with the Zephyr as a symbol of the nation.

Officially known as Amtrak Train No. 5, the westbound “California Zephyr leaves Chicago each afternoon, racing across Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska at 80 m.p.h. to reach Denver early the next morning. It spends the day threading the canyons and tunnels which lead through the spectacular Colorado Rockies; crosses the deserts of Utah and Nevada by night; surmounts the Sierra at Donner Pass, following the route of the original Transcontinental railroad of 1869; and finally comes to a halt beside San Francisco Bay 2,416 miles and 51 hours from the start.”

Such a long-distance passenger train is the perfect vehicle for an exploration of the national consciousness. Airline passengers see no scenery but an occasional cloud; and the short duration of plane trips coupled with the necessity of staying in one’s seat discourage conversation among passengers or between passengers and crew. People on long bus rides may talk to each other, but there are no crews to repeat what they say; and neither the atmosphere nor the paying passengers are likely to be congenial, while people riding in their own cars are by definition barred from conversation with others.

Rail travelers, on the other hand, not only tend to be interesting people but are encouraged by the relaxed atmosphere on board to loosen their tongues. Likewise, many of the Amtrak employees who work on the trains hold their jobs because they like both trains and people (though some of them are reluctant to admit it.) The result is that on a long passenger run like that of the Zephyr, strangers let down the barriers and talk. In “Zephyr,” both passengers and crews talk to Henry Kisor.

Kisor begins his account of the Zephyr’s westward odyssey not in the plush passenger lounge at Union Station, but in the Chicago coach yards where he joins Chef John Davis and his crew in stocking their rolling restaurant for the trip. Some things come by proper order; others by “dog-napping” supplies from other cars parked in the yard, whose own crews will later play snatch and grab themselves to make good their inventories. Chef Davis is proud of his work; while the Zephyr pauses at a siding along the Colorado River, he buys a string of fresh-caught mountain trout from a handy fisherman to enlarge his menu. The Chef and his crew will serve six separate meals to as many as 500 hungry passengers in a little over 48 hours; their dedication to their work is manifest.

The same quality shows up in many Amtrak employees. Kisor talked to them all, from station clerk and car attendant (they don’t call them porters any more) to conductors and locomotive engineers. They are young, old, white, black, Latino, male, female, gay and straight; but they generally seem to share a tolerance for each other and an esprit de corps, which stems from pride in their train and the work they do on it. They all seem to have stories to tell, too. Some are comic, like the tale of the boa constrictor that got loose in Colorado. Some are tragic, like the engineer’s account of the little girl who wandered too close to the tracks.

For people who think America is a nation on decline, “Zephyr’ is a tonic. It gives us a picture of a wonderful country whose people, while far from perfect, largely still care for others and take pride in what they do. From first page to last, the book recounts a compendium of small victories: just as the California Zephyr surmounts the Rockies and the Sierras, so do the people who ride it and run it surmount the barriers of racism, sexism, loneliness and physical shortcomings. Not the least of these little triumphs belongs to Henry Kisor himself, who overcomes his handicap to write this memorable book.

Ultimately, “Zephyr” is a microcosom of America in the ‘90s. Its heroes are the ordinary people who fill the story--John Davis, the proud chef; Reggie Howard, the train chief; Ray Craig, the thoughtful engineer; Linda Niemann, the brakeman; Robert Heath, the car attendant; Alfredo Gomez, the waiter; and so many others. They affirm our perception that the nation, like the train, is on the right track. The Zephyr may be literally No. 5; but metaphorically, it’s No. 1.