Perth to Sydney on a train — surely the trip of a lifetime, I think, as I cajole my reticent partner into joining me on the mighty Indian Pacific, which deftly crosses the wide, parched Australian continent in four days.

With whistlestop tours scheduled along this historically-intriguing Trans-Australia line — at Kalgoorlie, Cook, Adelaide and Broken Hill — you could be travelling back in time, and not just across a whole country.

We pass through a handful of tiny towns named after ex-Australian Prime Ministers: Coburn, Deakin and Cook, where you can buy a house for $8000 — as long as you take it away! Only 1500 km from Perth, the train drivers change jobs at this remote outpost, where four-year-old issues of Woman's Day sit in the gift shop, manned by one of the town's seven locals.

At Kalgoorlie we learn about the gold rush days and look out over the huge mine, a frighteningly massive rupture in the earth. At Broken Hill, the world's largest deposit of silver, lead and zinc, we learn about the town's rapid population growth back in 1883 when the riches were discovered.

After a day of locomotive action, however, gazing out at the unforgiving flatness of the Nullarbor Plain, we are like caged animals: surrounded by the existential expanse of the Australian outback, with nowhere to run or hide.

Cabin fever takes on a new meaning when you're travelling the longest straight stretch of rail track in the world — 500 km across the Nullarbor Plain (whose Latin etymology spells out 'no trees' for a very good reason).

This, and the fact we are politely but firmly instructed to sit with another couple at each meal (we are the youngest by a few decades), lock us into a very tight space. Sadly, this merely affirms our hitherto prescribed status as spoilt, restless, impatient Gen X-ers.

Is it merely a passing trend, or is there a reason young people avoid rail journeys? The plane is far worse for the environment, cruise ships make you seasick, leaving that old bastion of classical travel, the train. There's surely no more graceful and elegant way to get from A to B, without having to queue up in security lines, show the soles of your shoes to an X-ray machine and limit your liquids to 100 ml.

Films like Night Train to Munich, The Lady Vanishes and Strangers on a Train have immortalised old school train travel, showing the drama, romance and adventure to be had on a puffing locomotive. Famous rail lines such as the $20,000-a-pop Orient Express, or the incomparably exotic Trans Siberian, have made it an experience to remember.

In the Bond film from Russia with Love, Sean Connery kills his opponent with tear gas and a knife within his compartment. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, an English governess dressed in a very scary grey suit vanishes from the train. In Murder on the Orient Express, a man is murdered on the train when it is stranded in a snow storm.

It was this thrilling expectation and romance for an age gone that saw me getting hot and bothered by the Styrofoam cups in the lounge on the Indian Pacific; at the bad soft pop music playing over the tannoy; and at the stowaway shoe compartments that had been boarded up. These charming little compartments once linked your cabin to the hallway, where the shoes were whisked away and polished overnight by a little old man in a navy suit with gold buttons — how could such a sweet gesture be done away with, uncelebrated?

Is it merely my pretentious hankerings for retro-train travel that stirred up my irritation on the Indian Pacific? The food was fabulous, and the wine list decent, but having to sit next to another couple made us feel like we were at a community lunch, or, frankly, a retirement home. And our gold class compartments were identical to the standard ones I rode on as a kid, without the lavish touches you'd expect in first class.

This is a pity, seeing as in Europe, old-style rail travel has become a new world curiosity. In north London they have just built a seriously stylish new terminal, St Pancras International, where you can catch the Eurostar all the way to Brussels in just one hour and 45 minutes: quicker than the journey to the airport and greener than a cheap flight.

This is being touted the new age of the train, and the reworked, renovated St Pancras is the face of this new age. Like the much loved Orient Express, the architects have left in all the old fashioned touches. Original brickwork, old balustrades and webs of iron and glass offer up the comforts of the past with the precision of the future.

What Indian Pacific Gold Class lacks in glamour however, it makes up for in expansiveness. In Europe and Asia train journeys rarely stray so far from towns and cities — so it is wonderful to experience a brilliant, unadulterated night sky. And if you really are looking for serious pampering, you can hire a whole carriage to yourself, such as the Chairman's Carriage complete with two bedrooms and a boardroom table. At around $6000 you'd want to enjoy it.

As we settle into our fourth day we stop impatiently tapping our feet, asking for the time or wondering what's past the view outside. And crossing from South Australia into NSW, the ride becomes bumpier; since the tracks are older (the rail line consumed 2.5 million sleepers and 141,000 tonnes of steel).

We enjoy a delicious lunch and spot a wedged tail eagle, soaring high above us in choreographic daring — a beautiful sight against the vast, scrubby plains. And for one last moment before we approach the paddocks of Bathurst country and the cerulean blue of the Blue Mountains, it's just us, the outback, the eagle and that great marvel of 19th century engineering — the train.

Seeing the country by train is a once in a lifetime experience so you'd better make tracks!