Obama trains his eyes on history

ABOARD THE 2009 INAUGURAL TRAIN | President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday challenged Americans to pursue a “new declaration of independence,” paying tribute to history with his own four-city train tour that ended in Washington on Saturday night after retracing the path of President Lincoln on the way to his 1861 inauguration.

He began the trip in Philadelphia and stopped in Wilmington, Del., and Baltimore before ending at Union Station, just blocks from where he will be inaugurated as the country’s 44th president on Tuesday.

Though he followed the path of the Great Emancipator, America’s first black president called on the American people to “reclaim” the spirit of the nation’s Founders.

“While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our Founders displayed,” he said. “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.”

Mr. Obama traveled with his wife, Michelle, on her 45th birthday, along with their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, in a bright blue Pullman caboose car at the end of a 10-car Amtrak train full of Secret Service personnel and three cars of reporters. Following that train was another, filled with more security personnel.

The Pullman, a Georgia 300 built by Pullman Standard in 1939 and reconfigured in 1949 to include a kitchen, two living rooms and a small bedroom, is privately owned and has been used by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, as well as by Mr. Obama on a train tour last year.

All along the route, Mr. Obama and others blew the train’s horn at onlookers in their backyards and at crowds who gathered wherever they could find room. The crowds waved, cheered and held signs, braving the cold to wave at their next president and snap a picture.

In Baltimore, an estimated 40,000 people flocked to see Mr. Obama speak in the War Memorial plaza in front of City Hall, cheering wildly and some weeping despite the cold when he appeared.

“I love you,” someone in the crowd yelled.

“I love you back,” he said, drawing a loud cheer.

“As I prepare to leave for Washington on a trip that you made possible, I know that I will not be traveling alone. I will be taking you with me,” he said, again drawing loud cheers from an audience that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat and a Baltimore native.

The trip included two “slow-rolls” where the train went slowly enough for Mr. Obama to step out onto the back of the caboose and wave to large crowds from a railing covered in red, white and blue bunting.

During one of the two slow-rolls, in Edgewood, Md., a roar went up from a few thousand people standing behind jersey barriers in a parking lot as the train went by.

The train slowed and Mr. Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. waved to the crowd from the platform on the back of the train. Mr. Obama, who had not worn a coat earlier in the trip, had by this point donned one, though he still did not have gloves on.

By the end of the day, at his event in Baltimore, he wore gloves.

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