John Edwards felt bad his train couldn’t stop in Lawrence Friday night. So he and his wife will apologize in person at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Buford M. Watson “Train Park” just west of Lawrence’s downtown.

Crowds of more than 1,000 people lined up at the Amtrak station in East Lawrence, hoping the “Believe in America Tour” presidential campaign of John Kerry and John Edwards would at least pause for a proper reception as it passed through early Saturday morning en route from a rally in Kansas City.

Official Kerry-Edwards blog Earlier story

As the train neared Lawrence about 1 a.m., its sleepy passengers were roused by cheers reaching a crescendo.

“Speeding by too fast to count, on both sides of the track, was it a thousand or more people waiting for us in Lawrence, Kansas?” wrote Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, in a Web log posted Saturday morning. “They were cheering and waving and smiling. We raised our hands to wave, but the engineer hadn’t slowed and by the time we had waved even a little to the signs and cheers and camera flashes, it was dark again.”

Details are still fuzzy, but campaign spokeswoman Candace McAdams said Edwards would fly from Albuquerque to Topeka Sunday and arrive in Lawrence about 1 p.m. to speak at Watson Park, which is just south of Sixth Street, between Kentucky and Tennessee streets.