A All aboard!” The uniformed conductor at Manhattan’s Pennsylvania station called out the classic summons to adventure. “All aboard!” he called again. But he overstated the case. Trains are not for all — not in a nation where daily commuters are the only regular rail travellers and many citizens have never boarded one.

Cross North America by plane from New York to Los Angeles and you are in the majority travelling for work or a holiday; cross by car and you remain par for the tourist’s course in the world’s pre-eminent road country; cross the same immense and gorgeous continent by rail and you become an adventurous eccentric.

I had booked my transcontinental travel online in London: overnight from New York to Chicago, with a change of trains for the two-day journey to Los Angeles. Nevertheless, I turned up at Penn station hours before the afternoon departure; several garbled phone calls made me suspect that when it comes to snafu, Amtrak makes the British rail system look brilliant, and I wanted to be certain I had indeed reserved window seats.

Amtrak’s far-flung network is maintained by the federal government, which perhaps explains the wry tone of its employees when announcing late arrivals or, as often, early ones. Pamphlets distributed in the main stations urge neophyte rail travellers to “Tell your Congressman you ride the train!” and demand a dependable service.

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The Lake Shore Limited to Chicago was overheated and outmoded; the seats, however, had a generous extension, allowing those of us who are not very tall almost horizontal comfort even in lowly coach class.

Experienced travellers equip themselves with a neck pillow, a coat or blanket for chilly spells and, above all, a sleeping mask; Amtrak dims its lights, but never extinguishes them. I was going to upgrade to a “roomette” for my return journey — one advantage being the curtains between the bunk-wide compartment and the hall, which impose terrestrial darkness, thus rendering visible streamers of stars over the prairie outside my private window.

Manhattan’s aggressive verticals soon retreat and the great land known to Madison Avenue admen of the 1960s as “out of town” begins, first with the commuter belt, where countless empty cars at passing stations await the return of their lifeforce. “Park ’n’ Fly”; “Everything for Windustry”; “Get divorced, not broke”: signs of the times pop up on billboards.

Gradually, porches start to outnumber Porsches, and industrial architecture, most of it abandoned and elegiac as it can only be seen from a train window, is decorated with graffiti not as witty or sophisticated as Banksy — more impassioned and political. “Look alive!” outside Syracuse. “Your country is damned!”

I was tempted to nip off the train in Albany, but even American rail-pass holders like me, entitled to a specified number of stops and days, are hedged in by limited seating and the requirement to make reservations “as far in advance as possible”. As I carried only an overnight case, with nothing in the hold, a conductor I consulted suggested, sotto voce, that I simply disembark then turn up for a later train, hoping for the best. But the threat of being stranded in the imperious cityscape I saw through the window outweighed hobo spontaneity.

Passengers in relatively spacious “rooms” and two-bunk “roomettes” are summoned first to dinner in the dining car. “Wait at the door for myself to seat you,” a stern woman commanded over the intercom. Plebs, meanwhile, ate in the buffet car, or reserved places for later sittings in the dining car to lay out $22.50 for 8oz of marinated steak and $5 for a glass of merlot. Hard liquor is absolutely forbidden on board. Later, I discovered that meals are included in the swingeing upgrade from coach class. Meanwhile, I embarrassed hunger with a weirdly sweet cheese-on-rye.

Then, in the encroaching darkness, I stretched almost full-length, the seat next to mine blissfully empty. Trains keep to regional rhythms; Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was inspired by the riffs and bluesy syncopation of a westbound American train that now sent me into an easy sleep, barely interrupted until the stunning dawn over the Midwestern flatland.

CHICAGO IS my kind of town. Six hours between trains allows a sample of world-class architecture, tantalising galleries and the nervy street savvy Manhattan used to have, but sacrificed to become a tourists’ photo opportunity. The Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles turned out to be a sleek double-decker with a smart observation car open to all passengers, even those who preferred card games on their computers to the changing world outside.

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