U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and his entourage arrived in the Union Station in Washington Saturday evening, wrapping up a one-day “whistle stop” inaugural train journey from Philadelphia to the U.S. capital.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama (R) gestures as Vice President-elect Joe Biden (L) and Obama’s wife Michelle look on at the Wilmington Amtrak station, Delaware, on Jan. 17, 2009. U.S.

Starting from Philadelphia earlier in the day, Obama’s private charter train had make stops in Wilmington, Delaware, where he picked up Vice President-elect Joe Biden, and then in Baltimore, Maryland, before winding up in Washington, where the two men will be inaugurated on Tuesday.

In Philadelphia, Obama gave a speech to over 200 supporters and then held a roundtable discussion with 41 selected voters about the country’s future before he and his family boarded a train.

“We are here to mark the beginning of our journey to Washington. This is fitting because it was here, in this city, that our American journey began. It was here that a group of farmers and lawyers, merchants and soldiers, gathered to declare their independence and lay claim to a destiny that they were being denied,” he said.

Faced with unprecedented challenges such as the financial crisis, two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the global climate change, the nation needs “the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed,” Obama told the supporters.

AT a brief ceremony held at the Wilmington train station, Obama said to thousands of supporters people: “We know that America faces its own crossroads — a nation at war, an economy in turmoil, an American dream that feels like slipping away.”

“The American people are facing an adversity that the time has come to pick up ourselves once again,” he told the cheering crowd.

Obama promised that he and Biden are committed to making the government “accountable not just to the wealthy or to the well-connected,” but to the ordinary people who work hard every day to support the nation and their families.

Obama was following the more than century-old tradition of many U.S. presidents-elects, in particular Abraham Lincoln, to travel to the national capital for inauguration by train.

The trip on Jan. 17, three days before Obama’s swearing-in, was designed to highlight the inaugural theme of “Renewing America’s Promise” by reviving the tradition of presidential whistle-stop tours.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet