Obama rides rails to capital, as onlookers cheer

PHILADELPHIA – President-elect Barack Obama, tracing the train route Abraham Lincoln took nearly a century and a half earlier, undertook the final leg of his inaugural journey to the nation's capital Saturday, pledging to reclaim America's spirit but also warning of steep challenges facing the country.

Hundreds of excited people cheered as Obama waved from the back of the train when it rolled slowly through the station in little Claymont, Del., on the way to larger crowds at stops in Wilmington and Baltimore on the route to Washington.

Unfazed by frigid temperatures, scattered onlookers stood waving at crossroads along the way.

"Starting now, let's take up in our own lives the work of perfecting our union," Obama told several hundred people gathered inside a hall at Philadelphia's historic 30th Street train station. "Let's build a government that is responsible to the people and accept our own responsibilities as citizens to hold our government accountable. ... Let's make sure this election is not the end of what we do to change America, but the beginning and the hope for the future."

While talking about the future, Obama reflected on the past, echoing the words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln and President John F. Kennedy. He cited the founding fathers who risked everything with no assurance of success in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776:

"They were willing to put all they were and all they had on the line — their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor — for a set of ideals that continue to light the world: That we are equal. That our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come not from our laws, but from our maker. And that a government of, by, and for the people can endure."

It's a momentous time for the Obamas. And for Michelle Obama, it was also her 45th birthday.

The president-elect's triumphant day — to be heralded by cheering throngs along the 137-mile rail route — was starting in Philadelphia with a sober discussion of the country's future with 41 people he met during his long quest for the White House.

At the outset, he told a crowd gathered in a flag-draped room that the same perseverance and idealism displayed by the nation's founders are needed to tackle the difficulties of today.

"We recognize that such enormous challenges will not be solved quickly," Obama said. "There will be false starts and setbacks, frustrations and disappointments. And we will be called to show patience even as we act with fierce urgency."

He cited the faltering economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — "one that needs to be ended responsibly, one that needs to be waged wisely" — the threat of global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"We are here today not simply to pay tribute to our first patriots but to take up the work that they began," he said. "The trials we face are very different now, but severe in their own right. Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast."

Preparing to board the train, Obama said that "what's required is a new declaration of independence — from ideology and small thinking."

Obama's vintage rail car was tacked onto the back of a 10-car train made up of Amtrak cars filled with hundreds of guests, reporters and staff along for the ride.

As the train pulled out of the station at Philadelphia, the conductor said: "Welcome aboard the 2009 inaugural train to D.C."