TRAVELING IN STYLE : American Flyer : The California Zephyr Still Wends Its Way Across the Plains, Rockies and the Sierra. But With Amtrak in Peril Again, the Time to Take the Country’s Greatest Train Ride Is Now.

Train-riding is my personal nirvana, a transport of delight. Aboard, I always have a book with me; it’s generally open on my lap, but my mind is often elsewhere--or nowhere--in an abstracted musing encouraged by the muted but insistent rumble of wheel on rail, the faint, plaintive cry of the diesel far ahead, the joggle and jounce of the train.

And there is no better train ride than the California Zephyr, which glides through the Rockies and the Sierra in a flash of fluted stainless steel, its cars brimming with gawking sightseers and practical travelers destined for Chicago, San Francisco or, in the coinage of the railroads, for “intermediate points.” For me, the panorama scrolling past the window is simply addictive--whether it be the railroad yards and back streets of Chicago encountered in a westbound journey’s first minutes or the soaring Colorado scenery that will come the next day.

The California Zephyr is a handsome, functional train, hardly luxurious but certainly comfortable, with double-decked coaches, sleepers, diner and lounge car, and a coterie of fans who ride summer after summer, even though the CZ, as it is known to its intimates, is virtually interchangeable with Amtrak’s other western trains in terms of equipment and service. Only its storied name and scenery-intensive route, North America’s finest, set it apart among the troubled carrier’s steadily shrinking roster.

Still, the CZ is, however vestigially, imbued with a whiff of the romance and mystique of its predecessor, which ran from 1949 to 1970 on the Burlington, Rio Grande and Western Pacific railroads. It remains one of Amtrak’s most popular runs. Last year, the train and its connecting Los Angeles and Seattle legs carried more than 630,000 passengers, and sleeping-car space in the summer sells out months in advance.

But in this, Amtrak’s annus horrib i lis , not even the CZ is immune. Scrambling to close a $240-million budget deficit with virtually no chance for help from a hostile Congress, Amtrak is slashing service this year by 24%. Under the latest round of cuts, announced in April, the Salt Lake City--Oakland portion of the California Zephyr will be trimmed from daily to four times a week starting June 11, a move expected to save $5.8 million annually.

While the CZ was spared the outright elimination that some trains suffered, the reduction is eerily similar to the endgame that finally sank the original, pre-Amtrak California Zephyr on March 22, 1970: The Western Pacific, citing heavy operating losses, was allowed to discontinue its leg from Salt Lake City west, effectively killing the train.

Ironically, the first CZ’s uniquely rancorous discontinuance hearings, which attracted wide media attention, taught politicians that Americans would not lightly surrender their trains. A year after the CZ died, Amtrak was born. When the routing of its Chicago--San Francisco train was shifted in 1983 to two-thirds of the CZ’s original tracks, Amtrak proudly restored the California Zephyr name. Now, with Amtrak’s very ability to survive in question, time to experience this singular train trip may be running out again. *

The original California Zephyr, with its five Vista-Dome sightseeing cars, more than on any other train, took two days and two nights to complete the 2,532-mile passage between Chicago and Oakland (with ferry and, later, bus connections to San Francisco). I had ridden often, and the experience was incomparable. The partner railroads had lavished $12 million on the train’s diesel locomotives and 67 streamlined cars, each bannered “California Zephyr” in smart Art Deco lettering and individually named with the adjective Silver , as in Silver Bronco and Silver Solarium.

Service was impeccable. In the diner, waiters laid tables with white linen woven with the train’s dashing logo, winged Zephyrus, the gentle Greek god of the west wind. The china was Burlington’s colorful “Violets and Daisies” pattern, and the specially designed silverware was marked with an interlocked CZ. Multi-course meals featured tenderloin of beef stroganoff, broiled lamb chops and fresh Rocky Mountain trout.

The CZ was, for all practical purposes, the only transcontinental train scheduled expressly to exploit scenery. In either direction, its leisurely “carding,” little changed today, placed California’s Sierra and the Colorado Rockies outside the windows of the dome cars in daylight. At night the engineers notched out the throttle on the flat stretches: Nevada’s desert and the Great Plains. There were faster trains from Chicago to the West Coast--Santa Fe’s Super Chief, Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles and City of San Francisco--but none richer in mountains and rivers.

That was the CZ I first knew--a train with both high standards and plentiful humanity. How much of that charisma survives aboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr? At Chicago’s Union Station, I climb aboard No. 5, the westbound CZ, like its predecessor a train of dazzling stainless steel, now equipped with double-level “Superliner” cars. I find my sleeper and climb the stairs to a top-deck economy bedroom, softly lighted and welcoming. On the table is a California Zephyr route map. The hours ahead are like money in my pocket.

The nearly imperceptible nudge into motion is as exhilarating as ever, fraught with the excitement of being under way to somewhere. Though much has been made of the California Zephyr’s function as a “land cruise,” the train has never stopped being transportation, and this sense of movement and purpose remains central to the pleasure of riding aboard its cars. Both ocean liner and streamliner lose majesty when they idle; grandeur accompanies function and direction and urgency on the high seas and high iron alike. I’m glad to be rolling westward again. *

Though one can satisfactorily travel aboard the California Zephyr in a coach seat, the classic experience demands one of the train’s private compartments.

All sleeping rooms command “First Class” service, which in the morning will bring an attendant to my door with coffee and juice, along with a newspaper--usually, alas, USA Today, but occasionally the daily from a city along the route, which serves to enhance the grand, gradual sense of moving across the country at a stately pace--never faster than 79 m.p.h. Meals in the diner are included in the sleeping-car fare. Dinner is by reservation, just as in the days of the original CZ, and sleeper passengers get priority.

Dining on the California Zephyr is still a pleasure, though it surely falls short of the standards of 40 years ago. On the other hand, it’s far better than in the early ‘80s when, during another one of Amtrak’s financial crises, full dining service was replaced with warmed-over, airline-style food served on paper tablecloths and eaten with plastic utensils.

Since then, little by little, service has improved. Now, on all of Amtrak’s long-distance trains, tables are again spread with linen, and fresh-cooked meals are served on china. Chefs are trained at the Culinary Institute of America and encouraged to personalize Amtrak’s basic national menus. Dinner typically features a choice of roast beef or steak, various chicken and seafood preparations, and a vegetarian selection.

Service is generally good, though sometimes harried and always slimmed down compared to the train’s early days, when a crew of 22 in the diner, Pullmans and coaches served 280 passengers; today a crew of 16 serves more than 500 when the train sells out.

But dinner in the diner is still an event, enhanced by the very implausibility of enjoying a real meal, properly served, while tearing past cornfields in the hot summer twilight or snaking down a switchback at the foot of the Rockies.

And there’s the congeniality that somehow thrives on trains--encouraged in no small part by Amtrak’s policy of doubling up strangers at tables in its crowded diners. The bashful and inevitably revealing conversation among table mates with nothing in common remains one of the dining car’s most palatable offerings.

“My family was too poor to have books,” says a former citrus salesman over dinner, hugely enjoying his first Amtrak trip as the Zephyr races west. Reading, just discovered in retirement, is now his passion, and we unearth a mutual enthusiasm for William Least Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways.”

The next day, I breakfast with a nightclub dancer on her way from Boston to the West Coast by train because she doesn’t like to fly. She has a long, pretty face just beginning to be etched by age. “When people hear you’re an entertainer,” she observes, jabbing a hillock of scrambled eggs with her fork, “they make assumptions.”

Then there’s the retired Franciscan priest who takes monthlong jaunts, sleeping on the train six nights out of seven, zigzagging across the country. “The market’s been good and my utility stocks have done well,” he says. Recently, he’d completed his 101st rail trip. Does he keep a journal of his travels? “No,” he shrugs. “Like confessions, I forget them as soon as I hear them.”

Later, snug in my darkened bedroom, covers pulled up to my chin, I stare out the window as the California Zephyr highballs across the Great Plains. Remote farmsteads blur by, their porches pools of fragile light. At night, at speed, I’m especially aware of already having come a long way from the city and still having a long way to go to the sea.

The first morning after leaving Chicago brings the scenic piece de resistance , and I prospect for a place in the Sightseer Lounge even before we pull out of Denver. Seats will be scarce all day. This car, the train’s social center, is rigged with broad floor-to-ceiling windows on the upper level, a passable alternative to the original CZ’s splendid dome cars, though without their forward visibility.

Downstairs, an attendant dispenses drinks and light meals. The Zephyr is now an entirely nonsmoking train (including private sleeping rooms), and nowhere is this more welcomed than in the Sightseer car, where the smoke could become overwhelming.

Heading west out of Denver, the CZ makes a looping ascent of the Front Range of the Rockies, culminating in a dark transit of the 6.2-mile-long Moffat Tunnel. The line passes through remote, intimate Fraser Canyon, then follows the Colorado River for 238 miles, traversing a mind-boggling sequence of canyons: Byers, Gore, Red, Glenwood, Ruby. After passing the cliffs of desert Utah, washed red and yellow in the afternoon sun, we climb through evening’s long shadows to Soldier Summit in the Wasatch Range, then sweep downgrade toward Salt Lake around broad horseshoe curves.

The original CZ’s route across California followed the Feather River through the Sierra, but Amtrak goes via Donner Pass, no slouch either for alpine scenery. Here, a docent from the California State Railroad Museum at Sacramento boards to offer commentary in the lounge car on the Gold Rush, the exigencies of railroading over Donner Pass and the tragedy of the Donner party. Finally, the train descends into the agricultural lands of the Central Valley and, 52 hours after leaving Chicago, pulls into Oakland.

Like its predecessor, something difficult to define and invaluable to possess still attends the California Zephyr’s journeys. “A unique national asset,” the Interstate Commerce Commission characterized the train during its discontinuance hearings in the 1960s.

Now, the financial vise that squeezed the life from the original CZ--the very specter that Amtrak was created to address--has come to haunt its successor and the rest of America’s long-distance passenger-train network. How long the CZ, or even Amtrak, will survive is anybody’s guess. But when I collect my luggage and disembark at Oakland, I’m glad that the California Zephyr still lives.

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GUIDEBOOK / Making Tracks Routings: Amtrak’s California Zephyr is really three trains in one: The Oakland--Chicago CZ, the Los Angeles--Chicago Desert Wind and the Seattle--Chicago Pioneer. The Desert Wind and the Pioneer run three times a week only, combining with the CZ on different days.

Like smaller streams joining a river, the eastbound California Zephyr and Desert Wind flow together at Salt Lake City and run as one from there to Chicago; the Pioneer adds cars to the CZ at Denver. The reverse occurs westbound.

The Los Angeles-based traveler wanting to ride the CZ has two choices: Take Amtrak’s Coast Starlight north to Oakland, an all-day trip with its own scenic charms, then connect with the CZ (an option requiring a night’s layover in the Bay Area); or book aboard the Desert Wind, although the scenery on the Los Angeles--Barstow--Las Vegas--Salt Lake City leg is nothing special. Fares and accommodations: The CZ offers four kinds of sleeping accommodations: a wheelchair-accessible handicapped bedroom, a family bedroom that sleeps two adults and three children (providing two of them are short), plus economy and deluxe bedrooms.

Deluxe bedrooms are on the upper level of the car, where the ride is smooth and quiet and the views expansive. By day, each room has a sofa and swivel chair. By night, the sofa converts into an oversized lower berth, and an upper folds down. There’s a mirrored washbasin and a toilet annex that also contains a rudimentary shower, an amenity virtually unknown on pre-Amtrak trains.

Significantly cheaper economy bedrooms, located on both upper and lower levels (those on the upper level are preferable), accommodate one or two travelers and have facing seats by day and upper and lower berths by night. There is no private sink or toilet and luggage storage is limited. Public washrooms are nearby, however, and most cars have public showers as well.

The basic one-way coach fare from San Francisco to Chicago this summer is $217, but a round-trip could cost as little as $224, depending on ticket availability at the time of booking. A diverse routing such as Los Angeles--San Francisco--Chicago--Los Angeles can cost as little as $278. The additional charge for an economy bedroom each way between San Francisco and Chicago is $223 ($328 after June 15); for a deluxe bedroom $499 ($686 after June 15). Sleeping-car fares include all meals.

For those who love trains, but not obsessively, consider the Air-Rail Travel Plan--train one way, plane the other--that Amtrak offers in connection with United Airlines and sells through its Great American Vacations department, (800) 437-3441. A San Francisco--Chicago round-trip with a one-way airline ticket and a coach seat on the train would cost $536; room add-ons are as above. Reservations: Bookings can be made through travel agents or directly with Amtrak, (800) USA-RAIL. Typically, space on Amtrak’s western trains is tight in summer; this year’s frequency reductions may make the situation even worse. Flexibility on travel dates is essential. There is no waiting list, but travelers are given a deadline to purchase tickets when they make reservations. Expired reservations automatically cancel in the wee hours. If you religiously call Amtrak’s reservation number first thing in the morning (or last thing at night), you stand a good chance of grabbing a cancellation.