Overnight trains - when to arrive?

The schedule for the northbound Executive Sleeper was much better than the southbound. Boarded in DC at 10:00 PM (might have been 9:30 PM) with departure at 10:30 PM. The one trip I took on it was very pleasant.

Messrs. Arborway and Western Star, during December '63, I rode The Lark in both directions.

In the triple unit Lark Club Diner-Lounge, Later Dinner was a "steak sandwich", for which I'd say forget the "sandwich" tag. For Breakfast, both the Diner and Lounge cars were used.

But the most memorable experience was Southward, with my Roomette on the Engineer side, opening the shade on a crystal clear morning to the Pacific somewhere near Oxnard.

Definitely one to store away in my "travelmemory bank"; but that experience does not warrant attempting to restore a travel mode that belonged to sixty years ago.

Finally, lest we forget that during the '80's, Amtrak did operate the State supported overnight Coast Line "Spirit of California". I don't know how much reception it had outside the experiential travel community, but the State concluded it wasn't cost effective and dropped it in favor of an additional San Joaquin line frequency.

An overnight train LA to Downtown San Francisco would be interesting. Carry Sacramento cars then drop them at San Jose Diridon and proceed on to downtown San Francisco. Fix the track work at San Jose so the next train to Sacramento could back on to the cars make the brake check and depart on time. ( probably could be a cross over switch mid platform ? Then drop various passengers on the Capitol corridor train to Sacramento. Might even be able to sell a few passengers to ride in one of the sleepers ?

Returning scheduled Capitol corridor train could drop cars north of switch and when SFC return train arrives on next track it could back onto the Sacramento cars, Brake test and leave on scheduled time to Los Angeles.

My possible schedule would be :::
Lv LAX 2000 ar SJC 0600 lv SJC 0640 ar SFC ( San Fran ) 0805; Sacramento cars lv SJC on train 524 at 0640 ar SCS 0948

Lv SCS 1700 Ar SJC 20 00 Lv SFC 1855 Ar SJC 2030s lv SJC 2100 Ar LAX 0800