Results tagged “railroad”

Just before noon today, President-elect Obama boarded a vintage train at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia on a whistle-stop tour of cities along the mid-Atlantic seaboard with a final destination of Washington DC, where he will remain until his inauguration takes place this Tuesday. Obama then picked up his VP-to-be Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware on the "two-hour journey stretched into more than seven, as other invited guests boarded along the way—the final pickup being in "O"-Baltimore. The Times called the mood "more serious one than it was on most days of the presidential campaign." Just today in his weekly address, 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.” The train recalled Lincoln's initial inaugural trip to DC by rail and even followed some of the same route, but Obama never referred to the 16th president by name.

              

For decades, one of the best ways for moving people and freight to and from New York over land was by rail. As the car, truck, and airplane took over the railroads declined their importance – unlike most of the railroads weren’t cut off by the Hudson River. Today, most of that rail infrastructure is gone, but a surprising amount of it is still existing albeit in a rotting relic state. You may even have seen it preserved in places like Gantry Plaza State Park or Liberty State Park along the shores opposite Manhattan. Or you may have seen it in action with the railcar barges of the New York New Jersey Rail working their way across the harbor or when you take a train from Hoboken Terminal.