Bellows Falls put its best foot forward Monday as it played host to more than a dozen well-heeled private railroad car owners, who are traveling around Vermont this week enjoying the foliage from the comfort of their own train car.

The cavalcade of 15 cars, which ranged from the luxurious to the original, drew a crowd of local rail fans who came to ogle the cars, which came from as far away as California, St. Louis and North Carolina. All are members of the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners.

The special train, “The American Autumn Explorer,” had earlier been in Rutland and North Bennington, and was headed to Burlington on Tuesday for the group’s 43rd annual convention.

The owners of the cars were greeted like long-lost cousins by many Bellows Falls residents and businesses, some of whom set up a temporary shop in the train station. Other village shops stayed open later than usual for the 100 people who disembarked from the special train.

There were organized walking tours of Bellows Falls, and a fair-like atmosphere prevailed.

The visitors were feted with a jazz trio playing Cole Porter, the Jamaican Jewelz food truck and there was a mini-bar set up in the old Bellows Falls train station.

Some people greeted the train, which arrived 45 minutes early, wearing costumes and waving flags, and the curious sat on benches and just stared at the cars from another, but glorious era.

If people had hoped to get a tour inside the cars, which ranged in color from orange to green to fuchsia, and sported many romantic North American railroad names from an earlier era, they were disappointed.

One rail car owner, Tony Marchiando of St. Louis, a retired electrical engineer, said he hadn’t been inside the other cars either since they were essentially private homes. He bought his car, named after the Cimarron River, after it was retired by a small rail line in Oklahoma. He and his brother bought the rail car in 1983, and since then, have put 600,000 miles on it. They paid $10,000 for it. Since they bought it, they’ve modernized the plumbing and air conditioning — “all the mechanicals,” while maintaining its authenticity, he said.

It’s a constant labor of love, he said, comparing it to owning a boat — “you pay for it to be moved, you pay for it to be stored, you pay....”

“We lease it out to groups — local railroad clubs,” he said. Since it is a sleeping car, people usually have to join it to a dining car, he said.

“It’s very original, and we’ve kept it that way,” he said. It was built in 1948, and contains sleeping quarters for about 20 people. Twelve people were on board for the Bellows Falls stop, he said.

Marchiando and others admired a fuchsia-colored car from North Carolina. Word was it had recently undergone a $1 million restoration and renovation, Marchiando estimated, and the car’s windows revealed an elegant dining car.

The market for private rail cars is “pretty saturated,” he said.

Marchiando said many of the cars on the trip had private chefs to cook for the travelers. Not so the Cimarron, he said. “We have a microwave.”

David Graham, a friend of Marchiando’s, had flown out from St. Louis and joined the small train in North Bennington, and he took photos of the long line of cars in the Bellows Falls rail yard, with Fall Mountain in the background.

Marchiando said the group, all members of the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners, were headed to a two-day layover in Burlington, where the group would have its own tour and “car party,” and also hold its annual meeting.

It was his first time in Vermont, which is just starting to put on its colors for foliage in southern Vermont, although colors were more advanced in other parts of the state, and were described as peak in central and the Northeast Kingdom.

Bellows Falls artist Charlie Hunter, who had a small gallery set up in the train station, is a noted train aficionado. And he, for his business Roots on the Rails that organizes cross-country music trips via rail, rents such private cars.