CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A ghost train from the Gilded Age spent the night in Cleveland Thursday before continuing on to the East Coast this morning.

It recalls the way people traveled in comfort, style and luxury in well-appointed private rail cars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This train is en route to the American Association of Private Rail Car Owners' annual convention in Portland, Maine.

Three Amtrak P42 diesel engines are pulling 27 cars, each one a mobile million-dollar palace.

And while they echo the splendor of the Gilded Age, most of the 27 cars were built between 1911 and the early 1950s.

Many have been through several incarnations. All have been lovingly restored and updated and no two are exactly alike.

They include dome cars built after World War II, platform cars with open enclosures on the back like politicians used to employ for whistle-stop campaigns, and bullet-shaped observation cars that always ran at the back of trains.

One of these, the Georgia 300, was chartered to take several U.S. Presidents to their inaugurations – most recently President Obama in 2009. The car still bears the seal of the President of the United States in a sitting room

The sumptuous woodwork in the Georgia 300 demonstrates why private cars are collectively called private varnish.

Some have master bedrooms, most have kitchens complete with talented chefs, and some have dining rooms that would brighten any home.

The Dover Harbor is a Pullman-built sleeper-lounge-buffet car owned and operated by the Washington D.C. chapter of the private non-profit National Railway Historical Society. It was built for the Pennsylvania Railroad and looks very much as it did when it went into service for the New York Central in 1934.

The Federal is the oldest on the train, built in 1911 as an office car for railroad executives. Presidents Taft and Wilson used it from 1911 and 1916. It can seat 14 or sleep eight.

Borden Black, executive director of the organization, said each must be able to travel at 80 mph on most tracks, or 110 in rail corridor that joins the Northeastern states.

She and husband Nelson McGahee own the Dearing, which was built in 1925 as a sleeper and was rebuilt in the 1950s as an office car.

It passed to the state of North Carolina, which sold it on eBay in 2006. McGahee bought it and it took six years "to rebuild everything under the floor," which includes two massive three-axle trucks – the formal name for the wheel and axle assemblies.

He didn't say how much he paid for the car or the restoration, but Black said that in general, a road-worthy Amtrak-certified private rail car costs between $500,000 and $1 million to buy or rebuild.

Amtrak certification is necessary because almost all of them tie on to existing Amtrak trains. There are roughly 500 private cars with Amtrak-assigned registration numbers, with 125 to 200 operable and in private hands, while another 125 are business cars for the seven major American freight lines according to Rob Mangels.

He is a mechanical contractor hired by AAPRCO to deal with mechanical issues and perform required daily inspections of the cars on this trip.

Most of the car owners either sell berths or on the cars or allow them to be chartered, according to McGahee, but a few just have the cars for private use.

The name of the convention train is the Pine Tree Limited, and it is fully a half mile long.

It set out from Union Station in Chicago a bit after 10 a.m. Thursday, and did not arrive at the Norfolk Southern rail yard on West 150th Street here until 8:35 p.m.

The trip followed the rout of Amtrak's Lakeshore Limited and normally takes five to six hours.

But normally requires some explanation.

By law, freight trains are supposed to yield the right of way to passenger trains.

But so much freight moves by rail today that major freight trains are too large to fit on sidings. So passenger trains are forced to sit it out while freight race by.

The 200 passenger on the Pinetree did not seem to mind, though. They were on board out of a deep affection for rail travel, and rode in well appointed comfort with well stocked kitchens on each car.

The Pine Tree Limited left at 6:30 a.m. today, with the next stop in Buffalo, N.Y.