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This image made from an Associated Press video shows passengers boarding the Amtrak Crescent headed towards New York on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Bill Barrow\/AP<\/p>\n
This image made from an Associated Press video shows the Virginia countryside, as seen from an Amtrak train, Friday, March 27, 2026.<\/p>\n
Bill Barrow\/AP<\/p>\n
The Amtrak station in Danville, VA, is seen Friday, March 27, 2026.<\/p>\n
Bill Barrow\/AP<\/p>\n
Union Station is seen Friday, March 27, 2026, in Washington.<\/p>\n
Bill Barrow\/AP<\/p>\n
Union Station is seen Friday, March 27, 2026, in Washington.<\/p>\n
Bill Barrow\/AP<\/p>\n
ABOARD THE CRESCENT (AP) \u2014 There\u2019s something melodic about watching the sun rise over a rural stillness broken only by the rhythms of steel wheels on tracks. Or so we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n
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In this case, being aboard a train at all owed more to politics than poetry.<\/p>\n
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Congress and Donald Trump were mired in their latest budget stalemate, one rooted in the Republican president\u2019s immigration crackdown and the tactics of federal forces he has sent to U.S. cities. But this impasse has upended a foundational constant of American life today: easy air travel.<\/p>\n
In Atlanta, my hometown airport, cheerfully marketed as the world\u2019s busiest, had descended into organized chaos. Unpaid federal employees called out from work, leaving a diminished security staff to screen travelers frustrated by hourslong waits in line. I wanted to get to Washington for the NCAA basketball tournament. So I eliminated the risk of a missed flight and booked the train overnight and into game day across a 650-mile route.<\/p>\n
In this fraught moment in U.S. politics, I slowed down and thought about things we take for granted. Who ever ponders the conveniences of that 20th-century innovation, the airplane, that makes 21st-century hustle possible? We book and board. An unconscious, first-world flex of modernity. It\u2019s even rarer to grapple with the inconvenience.<\/p>\n
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My decision had taken me further back, to the 19th century and another defining innovation: the long-distance train.<\/p>\n
A 14\u00bd-hour weekend train ride is time aplenty to appreciate how completely politics, economics, social strife and fights over identity and belonging have always affected the order of our lives, including how, when and where we move around in these United States. But Amtrak’s Crescent also allowed me to see the expanse of our collective experience.<\/p>\n
I traversed the urban, suburban and rural breadth of East Coast America. I learned how other travelers came aboard. And in that, I found the portrait of people, past and present, who refuse to be as paralyzed as some of their elected leaders.<\/p>\n
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Convenience on the railways<\/p>\n
There is little glamour late night in a crowded Amtrak station. Children are up past bedtime and tended by frazzled parents. Older adults struggle with luggage and stairs.<\/p>\n
Airports are not red-carpet affairs either, of course. But there is a certain cache to Delta’s Atlanta-Washington flights. They typically take about two hours gate to gate. They often are slotted at a midpoint gate of the concourse nearest the main terminal. That is almost certainly a nod to members of Congress who use it \u2014 but who have lost some airline perks during this extended partial shutdown.<\/p>\n
In normal circumstances I can get from my front porch to Capitol Hill or downtown in as little as 4\u00bd hours. Security lines these days could at least double my overall air travel time.<\/p>\n
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The train is still longer, and time is money, we are taught. But certainty has value, too, even if it means at 11:29 p.m. departure. And at the Amtrak station, there were no standstill lines, no Transportation Security Administration agents, no ICE agents as stand-ins.<\/p>\n
Passengers who arrived mere minutes before departure made it on board and found seats quickly \u2014 assigned in boarding order, not predetermined zones that yield jammed aisles. There\u2019s no in-seat service or satellite TV. But even coach seats, the lowest Amtrak tier, are as spacious as airline first-class \u2013 and there is Wi-Fi, so it’s not the 19th century or even 20th century after all.<\/p>\n
On board, I heard one crew member joke, \u201cI’m no TSA agent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pathways of history<\/p>\n
As a boy in rural Alabama, I counted train cars and wondered where they were headed. I\u2019ve since read diary entries and letters from my grandmother and her sisters recounting World War II-era weekend trips to Atlanta.<\/p>\n
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The South’s largest city has a historical hook, too. Originally named \u201cTerminus,\u201d Atlanta developed in the antebellum era as a critical intersection of north-south and east-west rail routes. That is what drew Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman for one of the Civil War\u2019s seminal campaigns that helped defeat the Confederacy.<\/p>\n
A century after the Civil War, Delta chose Atlanta for its headquarters rather than Birmingham, Alabama, which was the larger city as of the 1960 census. The company’s decision was tied up in tax breaks for the airline, named for its crop duster origins in the Mississippi Delta region. According to some interpretations, Delta’s decision was made easier because of the more overt racism of Alabama’s and Birmingham’s leaders as they defended Jim Crow \u2014 a code that, among other acts, allowed states to segregate the passenger trains that predated Amtrak.<\/p>\n
On this night, I heard many languages and accents, notable given the role that immigrant labor played in building the U.S. rail system and especially striking now with immigration \u2014 legal and illegal \u2014 at the forefront in Washington, my destination. I saw faces that reflected U.S. pluralism, a different mix from what my grandmother and aunts would have seen a lifetime ago.<\/p>\n
The array of voices celebrated the freedom and ease of rail travel. So did Agatha Grimes and her friends after they boarded in Greensboro, North Carolina, as part of a long weekend trip to celebrate her 62nd birthday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI got stuck in the Atlanta airport last week,\u201d Grimes said, as her group laughed together in the dining car. \u201cIt\u2019s just nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beretta Nunnally, a self-described \u201ctrain veteran\u201d who organized their trip, said, \u201cThere\u2019s no worry about parking. No checking bags. You come to the station, you get where you going, and you come home.\u201d<\/p>\n
An era for planes, trains and automobiles<\/p>\n
Still, that is not as easy in the United States as it once was.<\/p>\n
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Just as politics, economics and subsidies helped grow U.S. railroads, those factors diminished the network as auto manufacturers, oil companies, roadbuilders and, finally, airline manufacturers and airlines commanded favor from politicians and attention from consumers.<\/p>\n
Riding hours across rural areas, I noticed the junkyards where kudzu and chain-link fencing framed rows of rusted automobiles. I saw the farmland and equipment that helps feed cities and the rest of the nation. I awoke to see the night lights of office towers in Charlotte, North Carolina, and its NFL stadium. I saw vibrant county seats \u2014 and I thought of countless other towns like them that are not thriving as they sit disconnected from passenger rail and far from the Eisenhower-era interstate system that we crossed multiple times on our way.<\/p>\n
In each setting, voters \u2014 conservatives, liberals, the extremes and betweens \u2014 have chosen their representatives, senators and a president who now set the nation’s course.<\/p>\n
When I arrived in Washington, I paused to enjoy Union Station’s grand hall and its Beaux Arts appeal, and I lamented how much splendor has been lost because so many striking U.S. terminals have been razed. I stepped outside and looked up at the Capitol dome.<\/p>\n
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While I had slept, the Senate managed a bipartisan deal to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except immigration enforcement. As I continued northward, House Republican leaders rejected it. The stalemate continued.<\/p>\n
I was a weary traveler but renewed citizen. I had a game to get to. And the train rolled on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This image made from an Associated Press video shows passengers boarding the Amtrak Crescent headed towards New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[87638,2895,11718,29233,32533,145,87640,23681,59373,73298,87641,86795,73294,84874,59371,84875,59372,61262,82,84,83,464,87639],"class_list":["post-226148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-airports-shutdown-long-lines-train-travel-amtrak","tag-alabama","tag-atlanta","tag-birmingham","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-dwight-d-eisenhower","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-package-100923-member-choice-lifestyles-option","tag-product-30041-ap-georgia-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30117-ap-washington-dc-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30594-lifestyles-formerly-weekly-features","tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-united-states","tag-william-tecumseh-sherman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}