I posted this on another forum, but it deserves to be posted in this thread as well.
In an ideal world, they should have a daily NOL-ORL train and something like a 3X weekly NOL-JAX train which would connect with the Silver Star for points North. I made a proposed schedule for both.
Gulf Coast Limited
Tri weekly
Dep NOL: 6:00am
Arr JAX: 9:30pm
Dep JAX: 8:10am
Arr NOL: 10:50pm
The above schedules would connect to/from the Silver Star in JAX. Could be a small train, just a couple of Amfleet 2 coaches and a cafe car. It'd give the people living in Gulfport/Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, Tallahassee, etc. expanded access to the Amtrak system.
The daily Gulf Wind would dep. NOL at 5:50pm allowing for faster connections from the SL and CONO and would serve the Gulf Coast at better times...on the return, train departs ORL around 5:00pm and arrives NOL at 11:10am...this would require adjusting the WB #1 schedule out of NOL to, say, 1:15pm....this later time out of ORL would, again, provide service for all Gulf Coast markets (Pensacola, just due to its location along the route, would get the least desirebale times, but it wouldn't be served at 1/2/3/4am at least) at better times.
In any case, the chances for two trains are probably slim and none, and slim just left the building, but it's fun to think outside the box a bit.
I get the feeling that we should see some form of restored svc between NOL-ORL in a year's time.