here’s 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.
In this case, being aboard a train at all owed more to politics than poetry.
Congress and Donald Trump were mired in their latest budget stalement, one rooted in the Republican president’s immigration crackdown and the tactics of federal forces he has sent to US cities.
But this impasse has upended a foundational constant of American life today: easy air travel.
In Atlanta, my hometown airport, cheerfully marketed as the world’s busiest, had descended into organised 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.
