Obama to travel by train for inauguration

President-elect Barack Obama, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and their families will travel by train to Washington Saturday, Jan. 17 for the inauguration three days later, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Monday.

Mr. Obama will pick up Mr. Biden in Wilmington, Del., on the way to the nation’s capital, it said.

The daylong trip, with stops in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore before the train pulls into Washington’s Union Station, is to be the “final leg of journey” that began for Mr. Obama on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Illinois to the U.S. Capitol, the announcement said.

Mr. Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency on the steps of the capitol building in Springfield, Ill., nearly two years ago. He served there as a state senator from his district in Chicago before becoming a U.S. senator.

The inauguration is to be held Jan. 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

“As part of the most open and accessible inauguration in history, we hope to include as many Americans as possible who wish to participate but cant be in Washington,” said Emmett S. Beliveau, the executive director of the inaugural panel. “These events will allow us to do that while honoring the rich history and tradition of previous inaugural journeys.”

Mr. Obama and his family will lead an event in Philadelphia before taking the train south to Wilmington to pick up the Bidens. They then will head southwest to Baltimore for a second event and arrive in Washington that evening, the announcement said.

The trip is intended to keep with the theme of the inauguration of the 44th president, “Renewing American’s Promise, it said, by stopping “in some of the cities instrumental to that promise.”

Philadelphia, “where that promised was realized,” was where the Declaration of Independence was signed. Baltimore, “where that promise was defended then immortalized in our national anthem,” was the scene of a battle during the War of 1812 in which Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star Spangled Banner.”