Midnight train from Georgia: A view of America from the tracks as
airports struggle in the shutdown
[March 30, 2026] By
BILL BARROW
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 14˝-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 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 — but who have lost some airline
perks during this extended partial shutdown.
In normal circumstances I can get from my front porch to Capitol Hill or
downtown in as little as 4˝ hours. Security lines these days could at
least double my overall air travel time.
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.
Passengers who arrived mere minutes before departure made it on board
and found seats quickly — assigned in boarding order, not predetermined
zones that yield jammed aisles. There’s no in-seat service or satellite
TV. But even coach seats, the lowest Amtrak tier, are as spacious as
airline first-class – and there is Wi-Fi, so it's not the 19th century
or even 20th century after all.
On board, I heard one crew member joke, “I'm no TSA agent.”
The pathways of history
As a boy in rural Alabama, I counted train cars and wondered where they
were headed. I’ve since read diary entries and letters from my
grandmother and her sisters recounting World War II-era weekend trips to
Atlanta.
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This image made from an Associated Press video shows the Virginia
countryside, as seen from an Amtrak train, Friday, March 27, 2026.
(AP Photo/Bill Barrow)
 The South's largest city has a
historical hook, too. Originally named “Terminus,” 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’s seminal campaigns that helped
defeat the Confederacy.
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 — a
code that, among other acts, allowed states to segregate the
passenger trains that predated Amtrak.
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 — legal and illegal —
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.
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.
“I got stuck in the Atlanta airport last week,” Grimes said, as her
group laughed together in the dining car. “It’s just nuts.”
Beretta Nunnally, a self-described “train veteran” who organized
their trip, said, “There’s no worry about parking. No checking bags.
You come to the station, you get where you going, and you come
home.”
An era for planes, trains and automobiles
Still, that is not as easy in the United States as it once was.
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.
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 — 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.
In each setting, voters — conservatives, liberals, the extremes and
betweens — have chosen their representatives, senators and a
president who now set the nation's course.
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.
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.
I was a weary traveler but renewed citizen. I had a game to get to.
And the train rolled on.
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