While my intent was to make this posting sometime before yesterday, but close to the end of the Presidential Campaign, I did not. However, I would have made same even if Senator Kerry had won the Presidency.
I believe "defeated' for all times is the campaign train.
Actually, it was "defeated' once before and that was during the 1956 Eisenhower (no friend of railroads) - Stevenson campaign, however it was reborn for the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest.
The 1952 and earlier versions had the candidate and handlers actually living aboard the train with most campaign addresses being given as whistle stop "stump' speeches. During 1960, the format ofthe candidate and handlers joining the train to "stump' through desired areas was adopted.
During this past campaign Sen Kerry used the train along the ATSF, and Amtrak Chief route as noted above. President Bush or VP Cheney did not use the mode at all opting instad for the whistle stop portions of their campaign to a motorcade of busses and other support vehicles.
Unfortunately, while in past candidates factored in the "lure of the train' especially to areas that had not seen a passenger train since A-Day, compared to busses, in which the candidate could be delivered directly to a venue such as a sports arena, the train was simply too inflexible. I'm also willing to bet that this year, the railroads let it be known that they would prefer not to have any campaign trains account tying up the railroad's freight traffic and the potential liability issues from personal injuries.
Possibly in '08, I'll be proven wrong. I have speculated in the past that if Hillary is to run at that time, she would start a rail "listening tour" at Oneonta, NY on the D&H. This is of course the cradle of railroad organized labor when Brakemen formed a Union, the Order of Railway Conductors & Brekemen, that remains today as part of the UTU. The first meeting, clandestine to be sure, was held in a cabosse enshrined there.
