By Caren Bohan
WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - Barack Obama warned on Saturday of the vast challenges ahead for Americans as he rolled by train towards Washington, where he will be inaugurated in three days as the 44th president of the United States.
Obama waved to crowds along the tracks from the back of a vintage train car at spots during the journey from Philadelphia to Washington. He takes office on Tuesday amid the deepest economic crisis in generations and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast," Obama said as he began the trip in Philadelphia, evoking the patriots who launched the American fight for independence in the city in 1776.
"While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not," Obama said. "What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed."
Obama, a Democrat, has vowed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to jolt the country out of a deepening recession.
He stressed in Philadelphia and at a later stop in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was joined by Vice President-elect Joe Biden, that it will take time and sacrifice to turn the economy around.
"This is more than an ordinary train ride, this is a new beginning," Biden told the crowd in his hometown of Wilmington.
The 137-mile (220 km) train journey launches three days of parties, concerts and shows to celebrate Obama's swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday afternoon. He also will stop in Baltimore before arriving in Washington on Saturday night.
The trip was designed to mimic the 1861 rail journey to the capital by Abraham Lincoln before he entered the White House. Obama frequently evokes Lincoln, the 16th president who steered America through the Civil War and ended slavery in the United States.
Obama will become the first black U.S. president when he is sworn into office on Tuesday. Janice Winston, 56, said she was overjoyed at the prospect.
"It's finally hitting me, because I'm starting to cry, that this is really happening," Winston, who is black, said at the station in Philadelphia. "Today is a new day."
Obama's train slowed to a crawl at a few spots along the route so he could step out onto the back of his carriage and wave to the crowds that lined the tracks in frigid weather.
In Claymont, Delaware, several hundred people gathered to cheer and wave to Obama, holding signs reading "Halleluja, We Did It," and "Hail to the chief."
BUSH: 'I DID WHAT I THOUGHT WAS RIGHT'
Outgoing President George W. Bush, a Republican who leaves the White House with some of the lowest popularity ratings on record, has used a series of farewell speeches to defend his eight years in office, including his response to the September 11 attacks in 2001 and his decision to launch the war in Iraq.
"I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right," Bush said in his final radio address on Saturday. "You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."
Obama got a big boost this week when Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled an $825 billion (560 billion pounds) economic stimulus bill that largely adheres to the measures the president-elect has requested.
Also on Thursday, the Senate voted to give Obama authority to spend the $350 billion remaining from a $700 billion financial industry bailout fund created in October.
His incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, told a conference of mayors in Washington the new administration was focussed on making the U.S. economy stronger and more competitive.
"We have got to invest in things that work in a different way," Emanuel said.
The priorities, he said, included investing in energy independence, modernizing healthcare and expanding coverage, delivering universal broadband Internet for a digitized economy and upgrading schools -- all of which will add to the already staggering price tag facing the Obama administration.
Obama's swearing-in on Tuesday will cap a nearly three-month transition to power marred by some missteps, including revelations that his choice for treasury secretary, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner, had failed to pay thousands of dollars in taxes.
Despite the mistake, Obama expects Geithner to be confirmed by the Senate and to go on to lead the administration's charge to boost the economy, which continues to be bombarded by dismal news in the worst recession in decades.
(Writing by John Whitesides and Andrew Quinn; Additional reporting by Jon Hurdle in Philadelphia and Jim Wolf in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech)
