No one would be able to confuse Newport News with a major terminal. Yet you line up and have your ticket checked to make sure you are on the right train.
Jaw-droppingly insane behavior. You're defending the indefensible, Thirdrail.
At Newport News, *all the trains are going north*. There's no sleepers. Long platforms everywhere. It's a lot harder to seriously get on the wrong train, or even into the wrong coach, than at... for instance... Syracuse, NY.
Which is run more like a proper train station. They announce boarding. Everyone goes up to the platform. Everyone gets on the train.
At Syracuse, they still steer everyone towards one or two doors, which is probably mostly due to understaffing, so sort of understandable. They still check the ticket at the door (which is explicitly contrary to official Amtrak policy). And yet it makes more sense than Newport News.
LA Union Station, with the bizarre exception of the Surfliner queue, is mostly run like a train station.
I think the last word on this still goes to Matthew Yglesias:
http://www.vox.com/2014/3/31/5563600/everything-you-need-to-know-about-boarding-an-amtrak-train
1) How do you board a train?
In general, once one knows on which track a train will arrive, one goes to the adjacent platform and waits. When the train arrives, the doors will open and people who need to disembark will get off. Then you go through the open door and hop on the train. This process is seen at train stations around the world, including intercity trains everywhere from Brussels to Shanghai and mass transit trains such as the 1, 2, 3, A, C, and E New York City Subway lines at Penn Station and WMATA's Red Line at Union Station in Washington, DC.
2) How does Amtrak think you board a train?
At smaller stations such as New Haven, New Carrollton, or New Rochelle, Amtrak uses the same boarding procedure used by foreign intercity railroad operators and by commuter rail and mass transit rail systems in the United States.
This makes sense, since that's how one boards a train.
However, at larger stations, Amtrak chooses to ignore 150 years of accumulated human wisdom about boarding trains.