SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Long-distance train travel is a bit like Monty Python humor: Either you get it, or you don't. Some passengers go stir-crazy as the hours roll endlessly by, no matter how posh their surroundings. Others relish the time to decompress, sink into a good book, chat, reflect, snooze, enjoy a leisurely meal and watch the changing geography.

		If you go... Wanderlust Travel & Events (www.wanderlustevents.com; 877-625-1717) operates two vintage 1940s streamliner rail cars that are home-ported in Oakland and used primarily on chartered trips to Reno, Yosemite (with bus transport from Merced) and other weekend destinations. Gourmet meals and an open bar are included in rates that vary according to group size and length of trip. Some departures are open to individuals. A round-trip "Reno Royale" trip with two nights' hotel, for example, starts at $425 per person. Other trips use regular Amtrak trains. For example, a three-night New Year's extravaganza in San Francisco with transportation on Amtrak, three nights at the Hilton Fisherman's Wharf, hotel transfers and a full schedule of activities is offered from $895. Wanderlust also works with Train Holidays/Uncommon Journeys (www.uncommonjourneys.com; 800-323-5893) to package luxury rail and cruise trips farther afield. Check Web sites for scheduled departures or call for group bookings.

The 21st century truth is that precious few Americans have experienced long-distance train travel in any form, let alone had a chance to discover if they like it. Passenger trains carried America west, took our fathers off to war and moved millions of us around the country before the advent of the jet age. But aside from a few commuter lines, they've since fallen off the American landscape.

What's the point of taking Amtrak's California Zephyr from Sacramento to Chicago -- a 53-hour, $142 trip each way -- when you can fly there in a fraction of the time for about the same money?

As any rail buff will tell you, the distinction is psychological: The train is about the journey, not the destination.

And these days, believe it or not, the journey can be pretty grand.

Amtrak's long-distance trains -- the Zephyr, the Coast Starlight and all the rest -- function for modern travelers not as airplane substitutes but as leisurely sightseeing conveyances. Ridership is high, especially in summer, when families come aboard for the express purpose of exposing the younger generation to a disappearing American experience.

And it's not just Amtrak's silver and blue Superliner cars that are making the cross-country journey these days. Privately owned rail cars are hitching a ride, too, ratcheting the experience up to the level of a "land cruise."

Curious to sample the velvet rails, I hitched a ride last week from Sacramento to Reno aboard a pair of chartered, 1940s-era rail cars coupled behind the California Zephyr. It was a bit like stepping aboard one of those relics on display in the California State Railroad Museum and having it come to life.

The meticulously restored "City of Angels" sleeper/diner offered white-tablecloth service in an art noveau-inspired setting. An attached coach that once did service on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's El Capitan route between Los Angeles and Phoenix sported embroidered logos on setback antimacassars and stenciled artwork on wooden panels between windows. Music from the 1940s played softly over the speaker system, adding to the period ambience.

The cars had been chartered by Wanderlust Travel & Events, an Oakland-based company that arranges private-car rail journeys for groups of 10 or more. In Reno, they would be boarded by a group of rail buffs from Wisconsin whose trip would take them to Sacramento and, ultimately, Yosemite National Park.

Ken Grigsby, the company's 49-year-old president, started Wanderlust about a year ago after working more than a decade with Oakland-based Uncommon Journeys, whose luxury rail and cruise trips (sometimes combined on the same itinerary) are marketed to individual travelers.

The vintage rail cars assembled for both companies' tours are "basically hotels on wheels," Grigsby says. "What we do is re-create the post-war travel experience."

Itineraries can lead wherever Amtrak locomotives go, with the flexibility to break the trip with hotel stays and add side trips by other modes of transportation.

The market for such trips is unabashedly rooted in nostalgia, Grigsby says.

"I didn't grow up with trains," says the man who now peddles them for a living. "We took our family vacations by car. But my parents' generation -- what Tom Brokaw called 'The Greatest Generation' -- has an affinity for trains. Just look at all the railroad museums that have popped up all over the country. It's a draw for us.

"We get people of all ages on our trips, and we hope to encourage a new generation. Today's trains connect us to our past."

Private rail cars cannot, of course, go faster than the locomotives that pull them. And Amtrak's long-distance trains, due to a variety of challenges involving track work and freight priorities, are notorious for running behind schedule.

But back in the private cars, Grigsby says, such delays don't matter much. "We have a full bar, we have a kitchen -- who cares? We have the happiest passengers on the rails."

But hardly the only ones. On the way up to Reno, as the Zephyr climbed toward the snow-dusted Sierra, we passed the Grand Luxe Express, an 18-car private train pulled by Amtrak locomotives. The luxury conveyance, formerly known as the American Orient Express, operates seven- to nine-day itineraries and counts a dome car and piano lounge among its many amenities. It's been creating tons of buzz since entering into contract with Amtrak earlier this year, and we could see some of its well-to-do passengers through the windows.

Meanwhile, back on what Grigsby dubbed the "Reno Royale," we dined on decadent breakfast quiche washed down with mimosas and, three hours later, a luncheon centered on even-more-decadent crab cakes, washed down this time with a good Napa chardonnay.

The meals on wheels were made all the more enjoyable by the moving panoramas outside the windows. The sinuous route we followed was blasted through the Sierra in the 1860s as part of the original transcontinental railroad. It roughly parallels the Interstate 80 corridor I've driven hundreds of times. But the views from the train were all new.

We rolled past extravagant country estates in the foothills, stared into the depths of Blue Canyon (much more dramatic than from a car), whipped in and out of tunnels and teetered above Donner Lake before crossing the divide and dipping down to Truckee. The train rolled into Reno about five hours after leaving Sacramento and disgorged its happy, sated passengers at a freshly renovated station in the center of town.

The Zephyr would continue on to Salt Lake City, Denver and Chicago without us, but I had a hunch I wasn't the only one who secretly wished to continue on.

Count me among those who get it.

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