The station, adjacent to the campus of Virginia State University, is served by five Amtrak routes: the Carolinian, Floridian, Northeast Regional, Palmetto, and Silver Meteor.

It has a brick station building and a single side platform adjacent to the two-track North End Subdivision.

Predecessors of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) originally had a station on West Washington Street in downtown Petersburg.

Relocation of the station to nearby Colonial Heights was proposed in 2017 as part of the Southeast High Speed Rail project.

[3] A single 1,200-foot (370 m)-long side platform serves the eastern track of the two-track CSX North End Subdivision.

[3] As of 2024[update], Petersburg station is served by five Amtrak routes with a total of six to seven daily round trips.

[21] In the late 1930s, city officials and the chamber of commerce began agitating for the ACL to remove its tracks from Washington Street and to build a new station on the belt line.

[23] In November 1941, the ACL began construction of a new brick station at Ettrick on the belt line.

[28][a] Freight service was moved to the new combination station around April 1955, removing trains from the West Washington Street tracks; the belt line became the mainline.

[42] On June 1, 1977, it was replaced with the Hilltopper, which stopped at Fleet Street west of downtown and used the ex-ACL route north of Union Station.

[41][37]: 254 On December 12, 2012, one daily Northeast Regional round trip was extended from Richmond to Norfolk, stopping at Petersburg.

[50] The Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor (SEHSR) project is planned to reactivate the ex-SAL mainline (Norlina Subdivision) between Petersburg and Raleigh, North Carolina, for passenger service.

[5] In 2017, the Federal Railroad Administration study recommended a site at Boulevard (U.S. Route 1/301) in Colonial Heights.

[56][6]: ES-12  The decision proved controversial; in 2019, the agency suspended environmental work on the station project due to a "lack of consensus" about the site.

[57] That July, the state announced plans to spend $5.7 million to modernize the station and make it fully accessible.

It will include a new 850 feet (260 m)-long platform with a new canopy, interior renovations, and modifications to the parking lot.