AS VACATION approaches once again, the prospect of traveling home via Amtrak looms large for many students from the Northeast Corridor. The federally-sponsored and seemingly always-bankrupt railroad has a unique sort of charm. If you like crowded, eternally late trains and continually climbing ticket prices, you'll love Amtrak. Every experienced Amtrak rider has had several brushes with destiny during the long rides to school and back. the railroad comes complete with a stock of weirdos, winos, and generally pitiful people, all of whom seem hellbent on telling you their life stories or annoying you as much as possible. The following characters are all real, and all of them are either pitiful or revolting, and sometimes both.

Two years ago, on the way home for a funeral, I was lucky enough to find a whole half-car to myself. Curling up on a seat (a 5'11" person can curl up on those seats only to a limited degree due to the immobile plastic armrest, cleverly placed to minimize human contact), I began to read a book for Gov 10. Now any jock can tell you that the readings for that course are fairly heavy, requiring a great deal of concentration. I was really getting into it by the time the train wheezed into Route 128, and then the trouble began. A middle-aged woman who looked exactly like Margaret Hamilton flounced into the car, checked out the rows of empty seats, and decided to sit next to me. Had she been even close to sane, this would have been tolerable, but she wasn't, and by the time she got off at New Haven, I don't think I was either. You see, she had this tendency to talk, and talk, and talk. The problem was that she wasn't talking to me, or to anyone else but herself. In fact, she never even looked at me, although I stared at her in disbelief.

"You can't talk to dead people," she said for openers, "because it's a waste of time. They never answer back." Okay, I thought, we've got a real case here, so be nice and maybe she'll fall asleep. "Handguns shouldn't be controlled, you know, I mean what if a ghost comes into your house? If you don't have a gun by your bed, what can you do to chase the ghost away? I have my rights, and I want to protect myself from ghosts. . ." On and on she rambled, getting louder and louder until she was literally screeching, trying to drown out the noise of the tracks. I was trapped until she suddenly bolted near New Haven, looking, I suppose, for the next blissful dose of thorazine.

Several months later. I embarked on the most tortuous Amtrak adventure possible--a ten-hour ride to Utica, N.Y., to visit a friend at a nearby college. If you figure that the distance from Boston to Utica is about 300 miles, and that the train ride is ten hours (as opposed to five by car), it's easy to deduce that you're trucking along at the estimable rate of 30 m.p.h. Any way you cut it, the company you choose will probably begin to wear a little thin.

Two or three hours out of Boston--at about the same time that the train backed up for a mile or so because the engineer had missed a switch--I hooked up with four young kids, none of whom looked very happy. They were all from the Boston area, all under 20, and all of them were on the way to Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago to report for four years enlistment in the Navy. Instantly I felt sorry for the poor guys; they had nothing better to do, no jobs, no money, and lots of brothers and sisters who needed their parents' attention more than they did. So we sat for a while, playing cards, smoking cigarettes and talking, when I discovered the real reason for my new friendships. There was this M.P. on the train, see, and he was prowling around in the parlor car so that they couldn't buy any beer. God forbid these poor suckers should get bombed on their last night of freedom. Well, this situation inspired me to do what I felt was my patriotic duty. Over the next six hours I bought somewhere between 40 and 50 cans of beer (with collected funds, of course). The geek behind the counter loved it. I told him I was the human keg. The M.P. knew, though, but didn't do anything about it. As long as I bought the brew, they could drink it. Uncle Sam moves in mysterious ways.

Last but not least are two different winos I've known. The first one, an elderly gent, insisted on singing every Ray Charles song he knew at the top of his lungs--and off key. Clutching his muscatel for dear life, he fought off three conductors and a plain-clothes cop until the train reached the next station, whereupon wino and muscatel went flying out the door. The other wino was the more genteel type--and she kept me company from D.C. to New York last Christmas. She was a sweet old Southern lady--74 years old, she kept telling me--with a habit of pulling on a flask of "Irish Rose" wine every five minutes. By the time we hit Baltimore she was polluted and getting rancher every minute. Having had enough of this Blanche DuBois-Belle Reve trip, I pretended to go to sleep, but this wasn't good enough for her. She kept whacking me in the side with her incredibly sharp little elbow. I still have the bruises.

You, too, can have these wonderful experiences. Just ride those magic rails long enough, and the flotsam and jetsam of the world will bother you. Have a nice trip, and in the words of Lord Baden-Powell, be prepared.