Riding the rails with U.S. presidents

For more than a century, trains and presidential campaigns have gone hand-in-hand. In the days before Air Force One, U.S. presidents traveled by train, many times in secure cars coupled to a regular train.

According to historians, William Henry Harrison was the first presidential candidate to campaign aboard a train in 1836. Although he lost that election, four years later he became the first president-elect to travel by train to an inauguration. Coming east from Cincinnati, Harrison boarded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Frederick, Md., to reach the capital via Baltimore.

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One of the most famous presidential railroaders was Harry S. Truman. During his 1948 whistle-stop tour, Truman traveled more than 28,000 miles and delivered approximately 350 speeches. By the 1940s, Franklin D. Roosevelt started traveling in a custom-modified car, the Ferdinand Magellan, that had multiple bedrooms, dining room and lounge. Travel by rail remained a primary mode of presidential travel through Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Since the mid-20th century, train travel has more often served symbolic purposes for presidents and candidates alike, especially through whistle-stop tours. President Gerald Ford and challenger Jimmy Carter campaigned aboard Amtrak in the 1970s, shortly after the company began operations. In 2009, then- President-elect Obama traveled to his 2009 inauguration on the Georgia 300, an historic car pulled by Amtrak along the Northeast Corridor.

See the slideshow above for fascinating historical photos from Amtrak's archives documenting presidential train travel through the years.