Obama takes train ride from Philadelphia to Washington

WILMINGTON: Barack Obama warned on Saturday of the vast challenges ahead for Americans as he rolled by train toward Washington, where he will be US Vice President-elect Joe Biden greets Michelle Obama as President-elect Obama gets off his train car in Wilmington, Deleware. (Reuters Photo) More Pictures inaugurated in three days as the 44th president of the United States. ( Watch ) Obama waved to crowds along the tracks from the back of a vintage train car at spots during the journey from Philadelphia to Washington. He takes office on Tuesday amid the deepest economic crisis in generations and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast," Obama said as he began the trip in Philadelphia, evoking the patriots who launched the American fight for independence in the city in 1776. "While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not," Obama said. "What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed." Obama, a Democrat, has vowed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to jolt the country out of a deepening recession. He stressed in Philadelphia and at a later stop in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was joined by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, that it will take time and sacrifice to turn the economy around. "This is more than an ordinary train ride, this is a new beginning," Biden told the crowd in his hometown of Wilmington. The 137-mile (220 km) train journey launches three days of parties, concerts and shows to celebrate Obama's swearing-in at the US Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. He also will stop in Baltimore before arriving in Washington on Saturday night. The trip was designed to mimic the 1861 rail journey to the capital by Abraham Lincoln before he entered the White House. Obama frequently evokes Lincoln, the 16th president who steered America through the Civil War and ended slavery in the United States. Obama will become the first black US president when he is sworn into office on Tuesday. Janice Winston, 56, said she was overjoyed at the prospect. "It's finally hitting me, because I'm starting to cry, that this is really happening," Winston, who is black, said at the station in Philadelphia. "Today is a new day." Obama's train slowed to a crawl at a few spots along the route so he could step out onto the back of his carriage and wave to the crowds that lined the tracks in frigid weather. In Claymont, Delaware, several hundred people gathered to cheer and wave to Obama, holding signs reading "Halleluja, we did it," and "Hail to the chief."