If I was to start a blog on railroads in Lakewood, New Jersey, how could I optimize it for the abbreviation as well (NJ) without placing both in the title? I don't want to resort making the title, Railroads in New Jersey NJ unless necessary.
If it's important to your user - meaning it's a keyword they use then put it in your title tag. You either want to be found or you don't. Why not Lakewood, NJ Railroads New Jersey Train Travel or something similar, there is no reason not to use it if it's searched and makes sense. It works I do it all the time with variations of a keyword. Use the zip code too if people are searching with it. Area codes can work if you have a telephone number.
Another option is to get some links back to your page with NJ instead of New Jersey. This will help boost the page if it is a common abbreviation. I have pages that rank for abbreviations that don't exist anywhere on the page. I'm assuming that Google knows how to sort it out. You can help them sort out the abbreviation by getting some links back to the page. The links don't even have to be very high quality to make it happen.
Have people link to you with NJ in the anchor text, and use the NJ abbreviation somewhere on the context of your page, preferably both in a paragraph and heading. Obviously having it in the page title would help alot, but it's not necessary.
I think this is correct. I have a site with 'New Jersey' (NJ isn't anywhere) and searching '[keywords] NJ' finds my site.