I took the 175 tonight and was ticketed from NYP to PHL. For personal schedule reasons, I hopped on at NWK instead and there were ZERO seats available.

I was pretty surprised to see this on a Thursday night (no holiday that I know of). Should I be surprised to see it oversold? Is this a common occurrence? Is there any "compensation" for riders that don't get a seat?

The conductor was trying working hard to find people who were getting off and matching them with people who were standing/on the floor. ^

(I was on an Acela from WAS to NYP last Friday at 3 pm and it was VERY close to capacity, but not quite.)