Weekend Escape: Coast Starlight : My Beautiful Roomette : Amtrak rolls to Seattle with scenery and style, though the berths could use a little debunking

My wife, Martha, is a Midwesterner, for whom railroads had always been a prosaic means of getting from one place to another. She was dubious when I proposed the weekend trip: a ride on the Coast Starlight train from Los Angeles to Seattle, with a quick return flight on a jetliner.

I am a Westerner, for whom any train ride is a rare and romantic adventure. I argued enthusiastically that the two-day journey by rail would be fun, taking us past some of the most spectacular scenery in the West.

In the end, I won. Sort of. We decided to go, but she got the lower bunk.

Our journey began when we were dropped off one sunny morning at Los Angeles’ Union Station, the splendid, 55-year-old Spanish-Mediterranean railway terminal restored recently to much of its original glory.

Martha travels heavy, and I was staggering up the platform ramp with her weekend supply of clothing, books and other treasures when a robust man named Greg, who turned out to be our porter, came to my rescue.

Helping me with the bags, Greg found our car and ushered us inside. Our spotlessly clean, stainless steel Amtrak car was a double-decker. There were toilets, a shower, baggage racks and several bedrooms on the first floor and another dozen or so bedrooms on the top floor.

After stashing our luggage, Greg led us to the tiny first-floor room--6 1/2-feet long and 3 1/2-feet wide--that would be our home for the next two days.

Human dimensions are important when deciding what kind of accommodations you want on the train. Amtrak offers a variety of choices ranging from reclining armchairs in a very public coach car to private bedrooms varying in size from the minuscule “economy bedroom” with a toilet down the hall to a much larger “deluxe bedroom” with its own little bathroom.

If you choose to sit up in public, the trip for two, including your plane flight home, will come to about $644 if you avoid the peak seasons, which include the Christmas holidays and most of the late spring and summer (when it’s about $250 more). Add $129 for an ecomony bedroom, and another $139 on top of that for a deluxe bedroom. The bedrooms are a relatively good deal because, unlike the chair car, the price includes all meals on the train.

We had compromised on the economy bedroom, which would prove a tight fit for one of us at bedtime. As a daytime parlor it was fine--two comfortably upholstered chairs the width of the room, facing one another with plenty of legroom between. There were reading lights, niches in which to store things and a fold-down table beneath the window that ran the length of the room.

At 9:55 a.m.--right on time--the train slithered out of the station and gathered speed. Within 45 minutes, the trackside warehouses, topless nightclubs, car washes and inflatable backyard pools of the San Fernando Valley were behind us, and we were gliding smoothly through the rugged hills and fertile farmlands of Ventura County.

The first call for lunch in the dining car next door came at 11:30, about the time that the train began its 104-mile run along the oceanfront from the Ventura River to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Following railroad custom, we were seated at a table for four with a couple we had never met. The four of us chatted amiably as the train flashed past Bates Beach--the nude beach near Montecito--before stopping at Santa Barbara. Since our meals were included with our room, Martha and I gorged shamelessly throughout the trip, making sure every slice of pie was a la mode.

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After lunch, Martha retreated to our room for a nap and I wandered another car forward to the lounge car, where conversation soon developed between former strangers. Equipped with swivel chairs and serviced by a snack bar and tavern on the lower level, the lounge car was an ideal spot from which to view the untamed Pacific shoreline.

For 40 unspoiled miles--from Gaviota, past Point Conception and Point Arguello to the rocket-launching gantries at Vandenberg--we gazed out at beaches unreachable by public roads. It was just after we turned back inland--in a lovely, oak-studded valley carpeted with sun-bleached grass--that our train came to an unscheduled halt.

“It’s a hot box,” said J. C. Collins, the train’s chief of on-board services, explaining that one of the axle bearings on the lead locomotive had overheated and would have to cool off before we could start again. Everyone took the delay in stride, and I asked Collins if passengers were always so well behaved.

He chuckled.

“We usually refer to this as the zoo train,” he said. “While the other trains around the country generally cater to older crowds, this one passes through nine major college towns. The other trains barely have a pulse. This one has a major heartbeat.”

After a half-hour delay, we got under way once more, but the hot-box problem continued and we lagged ever further behind schedule. Finally, near the Salinas Valley agricultural town of King City, our train crew admitted defeat and radioed ahead for a replacement locomotive.

It was close to nightfall when we started moving again, and Martha and I returned to our room. At our request, Greg converted it into sleeping quarters, flattening out the two armchairs and pushing them together to make a lower bunk; then pulling down an upper bunk from the ceiling.

Martha, who was finding train travel a lot more fun than she remembered it, is not very big, and her bunk--6 1/2 feet long and 2 feet, 4 inches wide--was quite ample, as was her headroom, which permitted her to sit upright while she read and gazed out the window.

I’m larger--a tad under 6 feet and about 175 pounds. And my overhead bedtime slot was smaller, kind of like those on World War II U-boats. My bunk was long enough, but it was only 2 feet wide, and felt even narrower. With my left shoulder against the wall, my right extended to the metal edge of the bunk. I had to either pile my arms atop myself like cordwood or let one dangle, like a pendulum. The top-bunk headroom was only about 2 1/2 feet, too low to sit upright. No window up there, either.

But I slept, at least intermittently, while the train passed through Oakland, Sacramento and Redding. At 5 a.m., I was ready to get up. I managed to clamber down without awakening Martha, but to get my shoes out from under her lower bunk, I had to sprawl face down in the aisle outside our room and reach back through the door.

Fortified with a cup of the coffee that Greg had brewed and left for us, I went to the lounge car, where some other early risers and I watched a stunning sunrise behind the snow-covered slopes of Mt. Shasta.

Most of the day was spent descending through the magnificent, forested canyons of the Cascade Mountains, again along routes largely unreachable by public road. At 5:30 p.m. we reached Portland, then crossed the Columbia River and the border into the state of Washington. Because we were running more than two hours late--and would reach our destination after most restaurants had closed--Amtrak treated us to an extra dinner. The sun was vanishing into the southern reaches of Puget Sound when we passed through Tacoma, and it was after 10 p.m. when we finally got to Seattle.

We could have caught a late-night flight back to Los Angeles, completing the whole trip in less than 48 hours. But we had decided to spend the night in Seattle and had booked a spacious, handsomely appointed room at the reasonably priced Inn at the Market, a 65-room hotel with European flair overlooking the waterfront.

The next morning, Martha checked out some of the shops along 4th Avenue while I prowled the fish, flower and vegetable markets at the foot of Pike Street. After stuffing ourselves with salmon and crab at one of the agreeable touristy seafood restaurants on Pier 59, we settled into a cab for the 20-minute ride to SeaTac Airport, and the pleasantly uneventful, 2 1/2-hour flight home

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Budget for Two

Coast Starlight, Los Angeles to Seattle, with return flight: $773.00

Inn at the Market, one night: $125.00

Breakfast, Seattle: $17.43

Taxis: $27.00

Tips: $24.00

Final Tab: $966.43

Amtrak, (800) 872-7245; Inn at the Market, 86 Pine St., Seattle, Wash. 98101; tel. (206) 443-3600 .