You know the song, now ride the train

Can you afford

Can you afford

To board a Chattanooga choo-choo?

I've got my fare And just a trifle to spare

The idea came to me in New England, of all places. I'd wanted a CD to play in the car, and bought the first thing I could find. It was a Glenn Miller compilation. Bowling along to the strains of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", it struck me that here was a ready-made itinerary, a syncopated odyssey, an adventure with its own soundtrack. One year later, I flew into New York's JFK airport on the first leg of a journey to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Of course, one would only travel to Chattanooga via New York City if one was writing some schmaltzy travel piece based on an old song, but I'm glad I did. New York seemed to be at its most scintillating and seductive. It was sunny, but not too hot, and there was just enough bustle in our hotel to make us feel we were staying somewhere special, but not enough to make us feel we were part of a tourist herd.

The Benjamin, on East 50th Street, describes itself as an executive suite hotel. It's about five minutes' walk from Saks Fifth Avenue and is hugely, discreetly stylish. Its stock-in-trade is a good night's sleep, backed up by a range of specialist pillows and a spa that includes a masseur and a reflexologist. Just as well, we felt, given that we were about to spend 18 hours on a train.

You leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four

Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore

Actually, you leave Pennsylvania Station 'bout a 25 past two, and the train leaves from platform 19, not track 29. This is only one of several small illusions that will be shattered on this journey: but don't worry, there will be plenty of compensations. A colleague had told me that America's Amtrak service bore an uncanny resemblance to British Rail circa 1971 and I was forcibly reminded of this as we boarded the train. We boarded several times. First we got into the wrong carriage, then the wrong compartment. Finally, amid much eye-rolling from the guard, who obviously thought we were extremely stupid, we were ensconced in our sleeper.

It didn't take us long to explore our compartment. It consisted of two (admittedly very comfortable) seats facing each other. What looked like a place to store your luggage was the lid of the loo, while the washbasin tipped out of the wall. I wondered whether we would be folded up for the night as well, but then we noticed a bunk high above us and discovered that the seats reclined to form the other bed. We didn't have to go to the buffet car as the sleeping-car attendant served soft drinks.

So we sat in our comfortable seats and watched as first New York and then New Jersey rolled past the window.

Dinner in the diner Nothing could be finer

Than to have your ham'n'eggs in Carolina

The train we were on was called the Crescent and its ultimate destination was New Orleans - from the Big Apple to the Big Easy, goes the Amtrak slogan. It stops frequently, and the names of the stations - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington DC; Lynchburg, Virginia - are like a roll-call from American history. But by the time we'd reached Washington DC, at around 7.30pm, history had made us hungry.

The dining car turned out to be another retro British Rail experience, except that I don't recall any British Rail employee ever calling me "ma'am". (I should make it clear that I regard the passing of British Rail restaurant cars with great regret: they used to do a fantastic cooked breakfast, and lunch on the Flying Scotsman was a very pleasant way of whiling away what was then a six-hour journey from King's Cross to Edinburgh.) The Amtrak dining car had the same snowy cotton tablecloths, the same rough-and-ready but good-natured service, and the same opportunities for eavesdropping on people's lives. There was some confusion over the bill: I couldn't believe we didn't have to pay. "Dinner and breakfast are complimentary for sleeping-car passengers," said the massive dining-car attendant with a hint of irritation. Then his huge face softened. "But I take it very kindly that you thought to ask, ma'am."

We went back to our compartment and slept fitfully through the rest of the night, waking from time to time to hear the wail of the whistle blasting through the darkness like a Glenn Miller brass section.

There's gonna be A certain party at the station

Satin and lace I used to call 'funny face'

There isn't gonna be anyone at the station in Chattanooga any more, because it hasn't had a railroad station since 1970. To get to Chattanooga, we alighted from the Amtrak at Atlanta and picked up a hire car from the airport. It's about 100 miles from Atlanta to Chattanooga, and a very straightforward drive. The original Chattanooga railroad station has been converted into a hotel, now the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Holiday Inn, and parked along what used to be the platforms are railroad cars remodelled as hotel suites. Did we stay in one? Are you kidding? Of course we did.

It's not a luxury, five-star-plus affair, the Chattanooga Choo-Choo (catchphrase: "It's a train! It's a song! It's a hotel!"). Wandering around the gardens, against a musical backdrop of Glenn Miller and other wartime hits, it was easy to imagine that we'd strayed into a Wim Wenders movie. But the old ticket office, now the hotel's reception area, boasts the world's largest freestanding dome. And the air-conditioned railroad carriage suites seemed luxuriously spacious after the Amtrak sleeper. But the best thing about them (for childish people like me, anyway) was that they used to be part of a real choo-choo train.

In 1969, Chattanooga was named the most polluted city in America. The Dynamo of Dixie, which worked so hard to attract industry to replace the slave economy of the South after the Civil War, had become Dixie's dirtiest daughter. In 1970 - the same year as the station closed - Chattanooga passed a Clean Air Act, and today the city is almost evangelically green. A free electric shuttle runs from the Chattanooga Choo-Choo to the downtown area, the home of the spectacular Tennessee Aquarium. The shuttle symbolises the new Chattanooga: efficient, friendly, forward-looking.

But while the choking pollution has gone, it is impossible to escape history here, and in this the railroad has a major part to play. The railroad put Chattanooga on the map, literally, in 1838, and by the time of the Civil War the city had been nicknamed the Gateway to the Deep South. As such, it was a strategic target and in the autumn of 1863, the mountains and forests around it became a battlefield as the fortunes of war favoured first the Confederates and then the Federal troops under General Ulysses Grant. One of the first places most tourists go when they get to Chattanooga is Lookout Mountain, where Grant's troops defeated the Confederates in the "Battle Above the Clouds".

Lookout Mountain isn't all about Civil War history: it also boasts the Incline Railway ("the steepest passenger railway in the world"), the underground limestone caverns of Ruby Falls and - my personal favourite - Rock City. Rock City is actually over the state line in Georgia, and it is the creation of Garnet and Frieda Carter, who developed this mountain-top park in 1932. It boasts hanging rocks, precipices, a Lovers' Leap, a Fat Man's Squeeze and a viewpoint from which you can see seven states. Garnet Carter, who seems to have been no slouch at promotion, came up with the idea of offering farmers across the USA a free paint job for their barn, so long as it bore the words "See Rock City".

There are so many tourist attractions in and near Chattanooga that it's difficult to believe that the city exists for any other purpose. Don't be snobbish about them: you will miss out on a treat. We nearly didn't go to the Tennessee Aquarium on the basis that when you've seen one aquarium, you've seen them all. But you won't have seen one that recreates the various stages of the Tennessee River. And there's the Bessie Smith Hall (she was born here) for blues fans; the hands-on Creative Discovery Museum for children; the Battles for Chattanooga Museum for Civil War buffs; the International Towing and Recovery Museum (yes, really) for anyone who just wants to keep on trucking.

The food's good, too. Barbecue is more or less compulsory so we passed a pleasant evening in the Big River Grill on Broad Street, sampling its beers (it's also a microbrewery), and another night tried Memphis ribs washed down with Jack Daniels and Coke in Sticky Fingers (no relation to Bill Wyman's British chain).

If, after all this, you are beginning to suffer from tourist overload, take yourself off to the Bluff View Art District, which is like a little bit of New England transplanted to the South. Yet again, this is the result of private enterprise (they don't seem to sit around bemoaning the lack of Arts Council grants in Chattanooga) and comprises restaurants, cafés, galleries and bed-and-breakfast accommodation in three scrupulously restored turn-of-the-century homes.

But for me - and for anyone who finds the phrase Chattanooga Choo-Choo nothing less than magical - the pièce de résistance was a visit to the Tennessee Valley Railroad. This is a trainspotters' dream, a railroad depot complete with station, marshalling yard, rolling stock, a turntable and a cast of wheezing locomotives that lumber past to a soundtrack of whistles, klaxons, and the insistent sound of hammer on iron in the depot's own forge.

The TVR, the biggest historic railroad in the South, offers the Missionary Ridge local service from the end of March to the end of October. This is a six-mile, 50-minute round trip from Grand Junction Station to East Chattanooga Depot, passing through the Missionary Ridge Tunnel. Passengers disembark in East Chattanooga for a layover, which includes watching the locomotive rotate on a turntable and a tour through the railyard and restoration shop, before reboarding for the return trip.

We saw a 1930s diesel from Italy, complete with fasces on the front (presumably one of the trains that Mussolini made run on time), parked next to a futuristic-looking part tram, part train that looked like something out of The Jetsons. But the steam locos are the stars, and it is impossible to resist the urge to clamber aboard and pretend to be Casey Jones.

When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar

Then you know that Tennessee is not very far

Shovel all the coal in

Gotta keep it rollin'

Woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

Getting there: Victoria Summerley flew with British Airways (0870 850 9850; www.ba.com) from London Heathrow to New York JFK, and returned from Atlanta to London Gatwick. The lowest fare for an "open jaw" itinerary such as this in September is £410 return as long as the ticket is booked before 31 August. From Manchester, Delta Airlines (0800 414 767; www.delta.com) is offering a fare of £1,053 for a Manchester-New York (via Paris) and Atlanta-Manchester itinerary in September.

On other airlines, at least one change of planes is required; Quest Travel (0870 444 5552, www.questtravel.com) quotes a fare of £349 on Lufthansa via Frankfurt.

Staying there: In New York, the writer stayed at the Benjamin, 125 East 50th Street (00 1 212 715 2500; www.thebenjamin.com), which has double rooms from $286 (£190), including tax but not breakfast.

The Chattanooga Choo Choo Holiday Inn is at 1400 Market Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402 (001 423 266 5000; www.choochoo.com), double rooms from $99 (£66).

On the rails: Long-distance passenger trains in the US are operated by Amtrak (001 800 872 7245; www.amtrak.com). The one-way ride from New York to Atlanta on the Crescent costs $158 (£105). Much lower fares are sometimes available online by clicking on Rail Sale.

The Tennessee Valley Railroad is at Grand Junction, near the Jersey Pike Exit off Highway 153, one mile from I-75 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For details of services and excursions, call 00 1 423 622 5973 or visit www.tvrail.com.

Off the rails: The writer's car was organised by Holiday Autos (0870 400 000; www.holidayautos.com); rates from Atlanta start at £189 for a week. The drive from Atlanta, Georgia to Chattanooga takes about two hours.