One of the exciting parts of this trip is that I'm going to be riding over to DC and not driving any real distance. My lovely wife will be dropping me and all my gear off at the South Bend train station tonight and I'll start riding in Pittsburgh in the morning (technically McKeesport after a short public bus ride). Then I'll take the train home from DC.
Fortunately, Amtrak takes bikes and provides special bike boxes. The Amtrak boxes are not your run of the mill bike shop bike box where you have to take off the front wheel, spin the fork around, and remove the seat post. 
These boxes are pretty big. I had to take off my pedals and handlebars. I was able to bungee my bars to the front rack to keep them from moving around. I rolled the bike into the box and taped it shut. Granted, I wouldn't want to put my bike on a delivery truck like this, but for a train ride where I'm not transferring trains, this is wonderful. For anyone else planning to do this, my bike is a 56cm LHT with Surly front and rear racks and fenders, and it fit just fine.
The box I am using was used by someone bring a bike to South Bend. So I'll leave it in Pittsburgh for the next cyclist. Hopefully, someone will leave one in DC for me. If not, I'll buy one for $15.
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