I think Amtrak shoots itself in the foot by not stopping in obvious places.
For example, Princeton Junction has a ready-made Amtrak audience: students/intellectuals/businesspeople who can get to the station quickly and easily from Princeton by free university bus or the Dinky, who are used to taking trains (there is always a crowd getting on and off NJ Transit trains there), and who would be more likely to take a train to, as an example, Mystic, CT, if they could get on at PJC instead of having to go into Trenton (which is going backward to go forward and is also not as nice a station).
Amtrak marketing is always so proud of saying how Amtrak serves more than 500 destinations. But I just looked up the number of "incorporated places" (cities, towns, and villages) in the U.S., and there are more than 19,000 of them! At least 10 or 20 of them should meet the criteria of PJC or of Charlottesville, as mentioned above.
I wouldn't expect the Silver Meteor, for example, to stop at every tiny town on its way to Florida. But, continuing to use Mystic, CT, as a destination example, how about the Northeast Regional that already stops at Mystic and a couple of other small places stopping at PJC?
Amtrak wouldn't have to add a route, a train, or anything else to simply stop at an extra station along the way. Yes, the stop might add an extra five minutes or so to the trip, but honestly, if they are going to run late anyway for all sorts of reasons, five minutes is not a big deal.
