Looks like President Elect Obama is reviving an old tradition of the incoming president traveling to D.C. by train, or at lest part of the way. I like it, a lot!
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-obama-inauguration,0,6649539.story
Hopefully this will start a new tradition – or should I say, revive an old one. I especially like the part about picking up Biden and family on the way to D.C.
Please: All you passenger fans don’t get your hopes up too high. This may be (10-20%) an indication of things to come but don’t bet your house on it!
As I recall Biden said he took the train to and from work every day, choosing to live with his family in Wilmington and commuting by rail to DC rather than buying a house in DC. Delaware is close but I think it’s like a 90-min trip one way??
BTW I wonder who was the last President to take the train to his inauguration?? I seem to recall President Truman left Washington by train when he left office in 1953, but not if sure Pres.-elect Eisenhower took the train to DC (from I suppose Gettysburg PA) or not. If not it would go back to FDR I would think.
I wonder if it will be Acela. The entire route is electrified, but it’s not romantic.
Acela would mean progress.
Antique train cars with the rear observation car would mean sentimentalism.
I wonder how they’ll do it?
When it comes to the elected, one must sort symbolism from substance. I suppose the object of attention growing a beard, donning a stove pipe and having a supporter holler, “Good-bye, Mr. Massey,” would be the extreme.
After his date with justice, seeing Illinois current Governor led in chains onto a Joliet bound train might also make a nostalgic photo op.
With Biden and entourage boarding at Wilmington, and a stop for some reason at Baltimore, it won’t be a regularly-scheduled run. If it’s anything like the last few times a president has traveled anywhere by train, there will be a train ahead of it and a train behind it, for security reasons. Even though that doesn’t sound sentimental, I suspect that the equipment will be.
You can bet that the run will have coverage. Let’s hope that the performance of all involved makes it good coverage!
[(-D] [}:)] I doubt that he’d end up in Joliet–his predecessor didn’t (these are Federal, not state, charges). But maybe he should practice singing The Midnight Special, just in case. (Not sure how the “ever-lovin’ light” shone on Stateville or the correctional center across the river, though.)