Obama Arrives in Washington After Train Trip
NEW DEPARTURE Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Edgewood, Md., on Saturday on a train ride from Philadelphia to Washington.
BALTIMORE — President-elect Barack Obama stepped onto a vintage train car, built at a time when a black man’s ascendancy to the presidency was impossible in America, and traveled Saturday to Washington in a three-day prelude to his inauguration as the nation’s 44th president.
As he did throughout his campaign, Mr. Obama evoked imagery of Abraham Lincoln, in word and deed, as he took an abridged version of Lincoln’s journey by rail to the capital before his own inaugural festivities in 1861. The trip offered Mr. Obama one more opportunity to savor his victory before he inherits the challenges that await him.
“While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not,” Mr. Obama said before the train ride began. “What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed.
“What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.”
The trip picked up momentum as it drew closer to Washington, with larger crowds gathering to wave, cheer and merely catch a glimpse of Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday will be the first African-American sworn in as president.
Mr. Obama opened his inauguration celebration at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, where a few hundred supporters gathered to send him off. He was joined on stage by his wife, Michelle; their two daughters, Malia and Sasha; and a contingent of friends from Chicago and beyond who have been by the family’s side on their two-year odyssey to the White House.
The train sounded its whistle and pulled from the station about 11:30 a.m., with the conductor booming, “Welcome aboard the 2009 inaugural train to D.C.”
Hundreds of people gathered alongside the track, at train crossings, in backyards and on rooftops, waving homemade signs and small American flags at the train. Those who came to witness the moment, even to catch only a peek of the train, stood in single-digit temperatures, with the wind chill below zero.
At one point, Mr. Obama stood on the outdoor platform of his private car, which was draped in red, white and blue bunting. He waved and smiled as he sounded the train’s whistle three times. (“You’re never too old to toot the horn,” he said later, talking to some of his guests on board.)
When Mr. Obama arrived at the first stop in Wilmington, Del., the crowd spilled from an outdoor plaza at the train station as Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family climbed aboard after a rally. They held a rally in Baltimore before arriving by nightfall at Union Station in Washington, where a large crowd gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue to see Mr. Obama as he was taken to Blair House, the family’s temporary residence.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we’ll see the spring again,” Mr. Biden said to shivering supporters in Delaware, his home state, who had been waiting for hours at the rally. “But I’ll tell you: spring is on the way with this new administration.”
As the train entered Maryland, about a dozen pickups and cars parked haphazardly in a harvested corn field. People stood outside their vehicles, capturing the moment with their cell phones or hand-held video cameras.
“We are praying for you,” said one sign, written with a shaky hand, which was held by a woman standing at Edgewood Station, not far from Baltimore.
The route was scripted with echoes of history in mind, with the trip beginning in Philadelphia, where the Constitution was written, and continuing to Delaware, where the Constitution was first ratified. At each stop, the 10-minute speeches from Mr. Obama were imbued with a sense of history, particularly as he called on Americans “to reach for the promise of a better day, and to do the hard work of perfecting our union once more.”
For all the pomp and celebration surrounding the slow-motion trek to Washington, a two-hour journey that stretched into more than seven, the underlying mood was a far more serious one than on most days of the presidential campaign. He has often delivered similar speeches with lofty tones, but the moment took on more gravity with the presidency less than three days from being his.
“We recognize that such enormous challenges will not be solved quickly,” Mr. Obama said to a crowd of about 40,000 people in a downtown Baltimore square. “There will be false starts and setbacks, frustrations and disappointments. I will make some mistakes, and we will be called to show patience even as we act with fierce urgency.”
While the day was choreographed with a Lincoln-era nostalgia in mind, the train ride was very much a modern-day affair, with cable television networks broadcasting live from a dining car and from satellite trucks parked along the route. It was an opportunity for Mr. Obama to turn the conversation, at least for now, away from the criticism of his economic stimulus plan and other stumbles in his transition, back to his victory in November.
Jacqueline Tinsley, 56, was among those who turned out to see Mr. Obama as he began his journey to Washington. She volunteered throughout the course of his campaign, well before even she believed that his quest would be a success, and said she could not miss this moment, which she believes will be etched in the nation’s history.
“In all my life, I never thought that there would be a black president,” Ms. Tinsley said, taking her seat in the hall of the train station in downtown Philadelphia. “When he first started, I didn’t know how much of a chance he had, but over time, you could see it within him. I know he can’t live up to every expectation, but he has something that we need at this time.”
Mr. Obama and his family were riding a private rail car called the Georgia 300, built in 1939, which has carried former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. At the time the car first went into service, getting a job as a railroad porter was among the highest aspirations for a black man in America.
It was the same blue vintage rail car that carried Mr. Obama on a tour through Pennsylvania during his primary campaign, a few days before losing that state to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“It was actually one of my favorite times on the campaign,” Mr. Obama told his guests aboard the train on Saturday.
Although Lincoln provided the inspiration for the train trip to Washington, Mr. Obama did not mention him by name in his remarks, though he has referred to him again and again as a historical beacon for his own candidacy. But Mr. Obama filled his addresses with phrases associated with Lincoln, including the “better angels” call to action.
“We should never forget,” Mr. Obama said, “that we are the heirs of that first band of patriots, ordinary men and women who refused to give up when it all seemed so improbable; and who somehow believed that they had the power to make the world anew. That is the spirit that we must reclaim today.”
Mr. Obama invited a few dozen guests, most of whom he had met during the course of his presidential campaign, to join him on the symbolic last leg of his journey to the nation’s capital.
There was the Fischer family from Beech Grove, Ind., whose home Mr. Obama stopped by for lunch one day last spring as he sought to show his connection to working families. There were the Girardeaus, a family from Kansas City, Mo., whose living room he sat in to watch his wife deliver her speech at the Democratic convention. And there was Lilly Ledbetter, a woman for whom the Fair Pay Act was named, after her long struggle with Goodyear to receive equal wages with men.
“Theirs are the voices I will carry with me every day in the White House,” Mr. Obama said. “Theirs are the stories I will be thinking of when we deliver the changes you elected me to make.”
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