(CNN) — “You ride along here at night going home. And you look out. You look in the windows and you see the lights on and think… What is going on at that kitchen table? What are people thinking about? What are their real worries?”
Such thoughts would occupy Senator Joe Biden’s mind on his homeward commute from Washington D.C. to Wilmington, Delaware.
The 46th President of the United State’s relationship with trains reads like a romance. Biden has traveled over two million miles on Amtrak alone, often chewing the fat with passengers — sometimes even buying the coffees.
All of this, though, was prompted by tragedy. Biden was sworn into the Senate in January 1973 at the hospital bedside of his injured son, Beau. The month before, Biden had lost his wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash involving all the Biden children.
Commuting by train meant the industrious family man would be home to kiss his two surviving children goodnight.
In one case, a train may even have won a certain president re-election.
Trains and tragedy
“Amtrak Joe” Biden has expressed his faith in America’s railroads.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
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