A long trip home

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- As the afternoon lengthened, thousands of families prepared for the trip home.

The lucky ones walked or piled into the subway or snuggled into backseats of cars. But for those who took the train, the scene outside Union Station was chaotic.

The police, saying the station was overwhelmed with crowds, stopped people from entering, and a crowd of thousands stood uncertainly outside. Clutching Obama tote bags and backpacks, rolling suitcases and strollers, they strained to hear as police officers shouted directions through a megaphone.

For some, the spirit of goodwill that had prevailed throughout the day began to fray, as it became unclear when the long day of walking and shivering would end.

"The MARC situation is a disaster!” a middle-aged man in a stocking cap barked into a cellphone, referring to the Maryland commuter train.

Tommy Williams, 36, a train conductor -- "ironic, isn’t it?" he said wryly -- had taken the train up from Georgia with his wife and their five kids, his mother, and his sister and brother-in-law and their four kids.

The family sat quietly on a curb behind a van amid the crowd. The trip home would take 10 hours once they got on the train, Williams said.

“But it was a good experience for the kids.”

Others had even farther to go, like Barbara Garfien, a public relations consultant from Marin County in northern California. She said she planned to spend Wednesday visiting Civil War battlefields at Gettysburg -- where Abraham Lincoln gave his famous address -- and Antietam before flying home Thursday.

"It’s sort of fitting,” she said. “It’s a long way from Lincoln to Obama.”

She and her husband gave their tickets to the inaugural ceremony to their daughters and ended up watching the speech on television at a friend’s law office.

“You know what? It was still great,” she said beaming.