On the rails.

BACK IN the good old days when manners were more important than money, people traveled by train. Even tennis players. My first trip ever as an adult was in 1954, from Athens to Belgrade aboard the Orient Express. Greece was playing Yugoslavia in junior Davis Cup, and I was half of a two-boy team. Our non-playing captain and escort was a Colonel Chrissoulis, as fierce an anti-Communist as Boris Yeltsin, but prone to put personal comfort ahead of the national interest. When he discovered the tennis federation had booked only two beds, he plunked himself on the lower berth, gave my partner, Nico Kalyvas, the upper, and ordered me to a rear coach occupied by peasants and their animals. (His rather lame excuse was that Nico, being poor, had suffered during the war and needed his sleep, while I could afford to go without it.)

Thus began my lifelong romance with trains. As well as my distaste for goats and chickens. Three years later I joined the tennis circuit, and trains became my second home. In the late Fifties, before jet travel, life had a different rhythm. The trip at times assumed a more important role than the destination. As in the case of the Blue Train, for example. This was, and is still, the train that takes one from Paris to the French Riviera overnight--a train driven by Cupid, according to French folklore. I can't vouch for it now, but in my time the hanky-panky that went on would have made Miss Biddle Barrows flush. There was even a story making the rounds that the Blue Train stopped ten minutes before Cannes in order for the lovers of other people's husbands and wives to disembark. Leave it to the French to start such rumors.

Some thirty or so years later, things are not the same. The French Riviera is a sweaty, overbuilt hellhole, le Train Bleu a haven for muggers rather than lovers. This summer alone more than fifty people have been held up and robbed. It is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid all over again, this time with a North African accent. Last summer I tried to go back in time and took a nostalgic trip to the playground of my youth. It turned out to be the kind of nightmare--daymare rather--that drives strong men to the safety of Switzerland.

So this summer, going into my 55th year, I tried it once more: tennis and trains. But only in good old Helvetia, the country Papa Hemingway described as more upside down than sideways. And it all worked to perfection. Just the fact that I didn't have to battle fleas, mosquitos, wasps, and heat rash would have been enough. Crisscrossing the top of the world on a train was an added bonus.

It began with the Glacier Express, a mountain rail line that connects two of the many jewels of the Alpine crown, St. Moritz and Zermatt. My tennis partner and I had just competed in the St. Moritz 45-and-over tennis tournament and, having lost in the final to two Americans, were on our way back to Gstaad, my summer base. The Glacier Express runs three times daily, and no sooner had we started than Nico and I forgot all about our defeat.

The absolute high point--literally as well as figuratively--is the cogdriven transit over the Oberalp Pass, as majestic a view as any on earth. We crossed almost two hundred bridges--info supplied by our conductor, as Nico and I were counting only the beers we consumed--and snaked through half as many tunnels. The breathtaking scenery was matched only by the feat of railroad engineering, although I did notice Nico crossing himself occasionally and playing with his worry beads. Our fellow passengers were mostly young, blonde, Germanic. The only person missing was Julie Andrews bursting out in song.

One week later we took a no less adventurous trip on the Palm Express, on our way to yet another oldie tournament at Lugano, on the Swiss-Italian border. On this route the panorama progresses along the shores of the beautiful lakes of Ticino into Italy and back to Switzerland, the difference being that the worry beads remained in Nico's pocket. Lugano, however, was a disaster, with Nico pulling a muscle in the singles final, and me having to scratch because of a business problem back in Berne.

On our way home we took the Golden Pass line, which connects Lucerne with the French part of Switzerland. We passed austere Lake Brienz on the way to Interlaken, with its impressive view of the Eiger and Jungfrau peaks. Then down through Saanenland to beautiful Gstaad. The Golden Pass has special panorama cars and runs daily from Lucerne to Montreux. The cars are as clean as can be, the service impeccable. God willing, Nico and I plan to repeat our three train trips every summer, even if we have to do it in wheelchairs one day. Every Swiss rail car provides for that eventuality, too.