The giant workhorses helped open the frontier of the West. On the other end of the spectrum, the Orient Express symbolizes the utmost in travel luxury. Borrowing from an Amtrak advertising tagline, there's something about a train.

With all that romantically reverberating in my mind, last month I decided to skip the now more typical hop-a-plane scenario when I needed to go to Fort Worth to pick up a new car. With a $31 one-way Amtrak ticket in hand, I settled in for what I expected to be a leisurely journey.

I should have instead prepared myself for the type of trip that used to be the fodder of "Vacation" movies.

The train was supposed to leave Austin about 9:30 a.m. on the appointed Saturday. One hour ticked by. Two hours ticked by. Nothing passed through but a couple of freight trains. A series of announcements updated us on a broken-down freight train on those same tracks between here and San Antonio. After three hours of watching and waiting, our train pulled in to Austin.

Passengers, friends and loved ones at the station had engaged in plenty of grumbling about the holdup. I was among them. Sure, I've endured plenty of delays on airlines. But this was particularly offensive, exacerbated by the fact that one of the clerks at the station seemed to be rather cavalier about the whole episode.

Mercifully, we finally were on our way toward Fort Worth on the Texas Eagle.

Our train crept through much of Austin. We barely got outside Austin -- Taylor, to be exact -- when we endured yet another delay. For an hour, we literally were stopped in our tracks with nothing to stare at but a field of crops and an orchard.

Again, it was Amtrak employees making the situation worse. The train crew held on to the why of our stop as if it were some big secret. We souls on the train couldn't get any idea how long we might sit in midst of nowhere. One staffer did offer a tidbit of information -- something about a freight train.

Once we escaped Taylor, things moved along pretty smoothly until a spot between Cleburne and Fort Worth. So close to my final destination yet so far.

Again, very little official information about the delay was dispensed, except that the culprit once more was a freight train. The crew was more intent on squawking about the menu in the dining car -- the steak was sounding mighty tasty at this point -- and the particulars of making dinner reservations.

By the time our train rolled into Fort Worth, I was tired and ticked off. And five hours late.

Was this anyway to run a railroad?

Once safely back in Austin with my new car, I took a few days to ponder the "adventure." I decided to call the customer service folks at Amtrak. The envelope for my ticket mentioned something about a service guarantee -- if a passenger isn't satisfied, he or she can obtain a travel voucher for another Amtrak trip.

Would it surprise you to learn this "customer satisfaction" encounter wasn't satisfying?

A telephone agent initially took my call but only told me I needed to talk to someone in customer relations. Those lines were busy. I wondered how many of those tying up the lines might have been with me on the never-ending trip to Fort Worth.

I could either call back or wait 400 or so seconds -- how many minutes does that translate to? -- until a customer relations rep was available.

After hanging on the phone awhile, I was connected to a rep. Once I conveyed my displeasure with the mid-July journey, he notified me I could get a certificate for a future trip. I responded I wasn't really interested in joining Amtrak for a repeat of the Fort Worth fiasco.

The rep instructed me to send a complaint letter, along with my ticket stub, to Amtrak's customer relations department. I'm supposed to receive a response in about six to eight weeks.

If Amtrak's answer is sent by train, it might reach me sometime next year.

It's a shame this trip has soured my adoration for Amtrak. When I lived in Missouri, I enjoyed several wonderful train treks. Riding Amtrak was a comfortable, cheap, convenient way to travel from Jefferson City, where I made my home, to Kansas City, my hometown.

Given my unsavory experience, the recent news that Amtrak is struggling financially comes as no surprise. Amtrak posted a $405 million cash loss in the first eight months of fiscal 2001. In a bid to cut costs, it's offering early retirement to 2,900 managers.

One federal lawmaker says the passenger rail service is "on life support and near death."

A law passed four years ago by Congress gives Amtrak until 2003 to discontinue its reliance on federal subsidies. If Amtrak doesn't meet that deadline, it must set up a plan for liquidating the railroad.

Simply put, Amtrak needs to get back on track.