New York ? Amtrak resumed passenger rail service to New Orleans on Saturday, bringing mass ground transportation back to the city for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

The train called the City of New Orleans arrived with 29 passengers aboard, greeted by a handful of well-wishers, after leaving Chicago late Thursday.

As he stepped off the train, Marty Robinson, of Paducah, Ky., sank to his knees, sang a song and proposed to his girlfriend as she greeted him. She accepted.

“I’m nervous. I’m shaking,” said Lorraine Talbot of Houma, La., who embraced the man who sang songs to her by phone in the weeks since the storm.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said passenger rail service was the first mass ground transportation to return to the devastated city.