Midnight train from Georgia: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle in the shutdown

his image made from an Associated Press video shows passengers boarding the Amtrak Crescent headed towards New York on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Bill Barrow) 2026-03-29T18:10:40Z ABOARD THE CRESCENT (AP) — There’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 stalemate, one rooted in the Republican president’s 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.

In Atlanta, my hometown airport, cheerfully marketed as the world’s 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.

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’s even rarer to grapple with the inconvenience.

My decision had taken me further back, to the 19th century and another defining innovation: the long-distance train.

A 14½-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.

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.

Convenience on the railways 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.

Airports are not red-carpet affairs e

原文链接: AP News