While VP-elect Joe Biden famously schleps into the Beltway via Amtrak each day, his boss Barack will get a taste for the train to Washington next month. Continuing a long tradition of new presidents, the New York Times reports that President-Elect Obama will hope a special charter train in Philly, pick up Biden in Wilmington, make their way to Baltimore, and finally pull into DC in time for the historic inauguration.

The procession tradition, notes the Times, is as old as the country itself. George Washington traveled by horse from his home in Virginia to his inauguration in New York City, then the capital (no word on whether he took the George Washington Bridge, but that would’ve been pretty cool).

More recently, President Clinton took a bus from Monticello (T-Jeff’s old crib) to Washington.

Obama is following the (rail) trail of his political idol, Abraham Lincoln, though the last leg of Honest Abe’s trip, from Philly to Washington, was done on the sly to foil “the so-called Baltimore plot to assassinate him.”