What’s the difference between a train and a cruise liner? Well, about 100,000 tons for a start. And several hundred people with silver hair and sandals.

But the essential difference between the two is purpose. Trains are about getting from here to there, while cruise ships are about holidays. If you want a train to stop for any length of time, you’ll have to arrange an earthquake or a landslide.

Or maybe an ill-placed leaf, if you’re in Britain.

Cruise ships, on the other hand, float about in leisurely style, stopping to let passengers visit places and buy trinkets. One company, however, has taken the cruise-holiday concept onto the rails. GrandLuxe Rail Journeys, formerly called American Orient Express, trundles luxurious trains on scenic journeys around the United States.

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They use highly polished Pullman carriages, for the train-spotters among you, and wherever they go, they stop regularly to allow passengers to alight and explore.

People hop aboard to enjoy a relaxing week of tea-sipping, fine dining, scrolling postcard views, diverting little day trips and Travel Scrabble. All with tuxedo-posh service. I sampled the Rockies, Sierras & Napa route, a seven-day GrandLuxe itinerary that runs between Denver and San Francisco.

Those of you reading from the comfort of an anorak will recognise this as the more interesting half of America’s most interesting rail journey – the celebrated California Zephyr. My train loped across plains, clambered over the Rocky Mountains, traced the Colorado River through gorges and valleys, and barged through the equally spectacular Sierra Nevada range.

We slid past snowy peaks striving for the sky, skimmed the rims of vast valleys, swooped beneath ochre walls of jagged rock, and scurried along lively rivers scattered with rapids and men wearing rubber trousers.

People waved at us as we passed, and as we sneaked through mysterious dappled forests, deer peered through trees, flashing their white bits as they bounded merrily away. I was delighted to discover that travelling by train is a fantastically close-up way to experience a landscape. The rails seem to go where roads can’t – you feel so in among things.

The great thing about doing all this aboard a vintage GrandLuxe train is that you can stand in the vestibule – the space between the carriages – and open the top half of the safety barrier. These carriages date from a time before health and safety was invented, so despite warning signs advising you to resist, you can stick your head out like a dog from a car and get the wind in your face.

You can suck in the desert dust, take bits of it home in your eyes, taste the pine-fresh mountain chill and feel like you’re becoming a part of the place. Actually, if you’re not careful, a part of you – your head, for instance – really could be left there. And that’s just great. On most modern trains you can’t even open a window.

But the real attraction of the historic GrandLuxe experience is supposed to be on the inside. And, yes, it’s all very lovely. There is patterned carpet, lacquered walls and beautiful furniture. The dining car has pictographic wood inlays in the walls, something that looks like marble on the ceiling, and gleaming golden scallops cupping the lights. For a country manor, it would be rather lovely.

For a train, it’s simply awesome. The service is also excellent. I had my own personal Jeeves, a small Asian woman – and, gosh, could she move. She would appear with cups of tea procured from the kitchen at the far end of the train without spilling a drop. I’d pop out of my cabin for dinner and she would remove all the furniture and replace it with a freshly made bed. So, the views are great, the train is gorgeous and the staff are superb.

There’s just one catch. It’s all a bit jiggly. You see, while we might bitch and moan because we have leaves on the line or the wrong kind of snow, in America they just have the wrong kind of track. It’s simply not very smooth or flat. Travelling on a train in America is like being demonically possessed by hula girls and rodeo clowns. Your head is thrown in one direction, your hips go the opposite way, and your legs just turn to jelly. The carriages wobble about so much that the water in the toilet bowl often splashes and slops onto the floor.

On the upside, you don’t have to stir your tea. Good thing, then, that the train stops frequently. It gives you the chance not only to brush your teeth without performing an accidental lobotomy, but also to enjoy some mini-excursions – perhaps a boat cruise on an alpine lake, lunch at a Napa Valley winery, or a quick peek at a ski resort set up by Robert Redford in the 1960s. Other routes have different stops, of course – there is even a GrandLuxe itinerary for golfers, which pauses long enough for 18 holes (or nine, if you play like I do) at courses along the way.

Side trips aside, I quickly slipped into a relaxing on-board routine. There were long, timeless spans spent watching scenery slide by and sticking my head into the wind. Evenings enjoying silver service in the beautiful dining car while people shivered on station platforms outside the window. And after dinner, the game of trying to think of a song request that the pianist couldn’t meet.

One could get used to this. I found a big GrandLuxe route map on the wall of the lounge car and spent many moments studying it, dreaming of possible journeys. I traced my finger along routes that scamper through America’s great national parks, such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon.

You can potter up the Pacific coast. I followed another trip from New Orleans to Washington DC, thinking that it would be the perfect route for all civil war buffs, before involuntarily head-butting the wall.

Regardless of which option you choose, I reckon the scenic variety and the widescreen immediacy of the landscape would be utterly wonderful – and the exciting possibility of having your head removed by a branch should be experienced before it is not allowed any more. But even if you stay inside the train, hanging out in the viewing car, where the glass-sausage ceiling gives you an all-round view, the gilded historic atmosphere and tiptop service are real highlights. And despite the constant wobbling, I now realise I was actually far more jangled before the trip than after.

Oh... and while we’re on the subject of wobbles, it turns out that the GrandLuxe people have thought of everything. They tell me they can “customise the speed of the train to maximise passenger comfort”. And here’s what that means in practice: “Disengage full-tilt wobble warp. Mr Quested is about to partake of soup.” Now that’s service.

Andrew Quested travelled as a guest of British Airways and GrandLuxe Rail Journeys

Travel details: Trailfinders (0845 050 5871, www.trailfinders.com) can arrange trips on any of the GrandLuxe Rail Journeys (www.americanorientexpress.com). A seven-day trip from Denver to San Francisco starts at £2,639pp, including flights from Heathrow to Denver and back from San Francisco. Or try All America Holidays (0844 770 0751, www.allamericaholidays.com) or North America Travel Service (0161 839 8844,www.northamericatravelservice.co.uk ).

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