I don't love trains. And I don't love cars. But I've come to hate planes.

Not just the bad weather delays, but wretched service and deceitful business practices. Like the time some airline sold us seats that didn't exist on a connecting flight out of Detroit two days before Christmas.

So as we planned last summer's grand tour of northern relatives, we decided to reclaim our independence with our new van. We mapped out a route that would take us from Tampa through Charleston, S.C., to western Pennsylvania, to the eastern end of Long Island to Washington, D.C., to . . .

Here my wife, Alliston, interrupted.

As the person who would provide the in-car entertainment for 17 days (read: we have no DVD player), she knew instinctively that by that point in our journey she would have exhausted her repertoire of distractions. Three young boys can do that to you.

''We should take the Auto Train home,'' she said.

We'll get on just outside of Washington. We'll sleep on the train and the next morning we're outside Orlando. The kids will love it, she said.

But it's Amtrak, I was thinking. If there's anything worse than unregulated airlines, could it be a quasi-government-run train?

She was on the phone and booking our tickets before I could respond.

ADJOINING ROOMS

An hour of cajoling the Amtrak operator later, we had secured two adjoining compartments with bathrooms on Train 53, departing Lorton, Va., at 4 p.m. Aug. 3 , arriving in Sanford, at 9 the following morning. Total cost for our one-way journey: $1,044 -- $346 for the van and $349 per room.

I remember Alliston asking the Amtrak lady about reserving seats for dinner. She wanted to make sure we got an early seating (there are three: 5, 7 and 9 p.m.).

''Don't worry. You'll take care of that at check-in,'' the operator said.

The vacation proceeded exactly as we had hoped. All of the eventfulness occurred in the right places -- namely the destinations, not the Detroit airport. We covered 2,135 miles by car, and visited forts from three American wars. But as predicted, after Washington we felt like we'd been on the march long enough.

On the afternoon of Aug. 3, we said goodbye to the last relative and pulled out of D.C. Thirty minutes of traffic-free driving later we arrived at the vehicle queue at the Amtrak station.

We left the keys in the ignition and removed a couple of overnight bags and a small cooler stocked with fruit, cheese, hummus and crackers we'd bought at a nearby supermarket. The value of this became clear moments later. Standing in line I saw that the 7 p.m. seating was already full. The family in front of us grabbed the last table at the 5 p.m. seating, leaving us about five hours before dinner.

ROOM TO ROMP

Inside the two-level train, we discovered what appeared to be surprisingly spacious compartments, especially when Sallie, our steward, unlocked the pass-through door. She sorted out the lights, the call button (``I don't run, but I walk quick''), the timing of the movie in the lounge car, when the bar closes. She asked when we wanted the beds turned down for the night.

After many cumulative hours strapped in their car seats, the boys romped freely. Alliston and I happily ceded control of Cabin M and relaxed in Cabin L. Just before 4 p.m., the train, pulling 15 passenger cars (387 people, 160 of them in the sleeper cars) and 17 auto cars (144 cars, 40 vans and one motorcycle), lurched gently forward.

By 4:40 we were passing through Fredericksburg, Va.

The first nosebleed occurred at 4:50 p.m. I wrote it down, along with the observation that the one advantage to traveling in a car is that the kids are restrained. On the train, there's enough room for a 7-year-old and two 4-year-olds to really mix it up.

We implemented a quiet reading policy that lasted until Richmond, when we decamped to the lounge car to play a card game called ''Politically Correct War.'' The suits are Peace, Love, Unity and Diversity and the object is to end up with as few cards as possible. It's as boring as the original version.

The screening of Dreamgirls began, but this was of limited interest to the boys, who began to show signs of hunger-driven unrest. We mowed through the food from the cooler.

DINNER FOR FOUR

At the stroke of 9 we sprinted into the dining car. We wedged into a table made for four and start murdering rolls and salad. The food came quickly (my steak perhaps a little too quickly given that it was still purple). We swayed down the aisle back to our compartments where Sallie had pulled out the four stowaway berths and made them up with sheets, blankets and pillows.

With five people, a couple of them taller than average, it was extremely cozy.

The train jounced along through the night. If it was rhythmically clacking along the tracks, it was doing so in a time signature I didn't recognize. We all awoke more or less at first light, tucked into a decent continental breakfast in the dining car and by 7:30 we were in Palatka.

The last hour of the ride featured an uninterrupted view of back yards, back doors, kudzu and conked-out cars. Scenery is not why you travel this route, I determined, but unremarkable as it was I thought it was a nice change from the monotony of the interstate.

We arrived 45 minutes ahead of schedule. The first car rolled off at 9:13 and 17 minutes later our van appeared. The vehicles come off in random order, but we got lucky.

The other night I asked the boys what they remembered about the train. Kicking the big button to open the door between the train cars. Standing on the toilet to take a shower. Sleeping behind a net in the top bunk.

No one remembered the bloody nose, the late dinner or the lackluster scenery.

My wife was right. They loved it.

• Amtrak's Auto Train: Reservations and information, 800-872-7245; www.amtrak.com.

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