Well I will throw my 2 cents worth in here
Cal Zephyr: as the above poster said, but one of the sleepers would be a through sleeper from New York City. The sleeper from New York City would alternate between the PRR and the NYC. There could be as many as 16 to 18 cars depending on the time of year and the traffic demands. the first one or two cars would have been baggage cars then there were five different vista domes on the Zephyr, the first one was the Women's and childeren's dome, this one had extra doors on the hall way so that there was more privacy for women that had young children with them, the second one had a separate compartment for the conductors office, the third one was a plain dome coach, the fourth dome was a Dormitory-Buffet-Lounge Car, the next two cars would have been sleepers, usually 10-6 style sleepers, then a 48 seat diner, next would have been one or two 16 section sleepers, then the cars from New York City, and finally would have been the 1 Drawing Room, 3 Double Bedrooms Vista Dome Buffet Lounge Observation. If you want to see the actual car numbers see (
http://www.broadway-limited.com/cal zephyr consisting online.pdf ), one other thing to remember is that while the CB&Q, D&RGW and the WP all owned one or more complete sets of cars to make up one train set, a train would have had cars from all three or four if you include the sleeper that the PRR owned so on any given day you would have seen cars from the CB&Q, the D&RGW. the WP and PRR.
SP Morning or Coast Daylight: Combine Baggage / Chair, Single Chair, Articulated Chair, Articulated Chair, Articulated Coffee shop - Kitchen - Diner, Articulated Chair, Lounge, Parlor Car, Parlor Observation, giving a total of 14 cars, at peak traffic times they would add up to 3 more Articulated Chair cars giving a total of 20 cars. After this point they would start to run a second section. Remember this was a short haul train with a run of 400 or so miles that was done in 8 hours, leave LA at 8:00am and arrive in San Fransisco around 4:00pm so it did not need any sleepers. The over night train was The Owl and it also would take about 8 hours to make it's run but was mostly sleepers. Leaving about 10:00pm and arriving at around 6:00am. With this train you could board any time between 8:00pm and 10:00pm and disembark any time till about 8:00am. This way you could get a full night sleep. If you were taking the Owl what a lot of people would do is go down to the station have a nice diner at the restaurant then board the train and then maybe have a nite cap in the lounge, go to their compartment and go to sleep and wake up the next morning in the other city ready to get a full days work done and then return to their stating point the next night. The 20th Century Limited and the Broadway Limited both worked this way also. I would say that 80% of the over night trains business was from business people. The eastern trains had barbers, secretary and similar amenity's on board so when you got to your destination you were all ready to get to work.
If there were an RPO (Railway Post Office) on the train there were usually several baggage cars attached with the RPO one or more of these cars would have mail in them and be a "sealed car" usually one car either side of the RPO would be a "Working Car" meaning that the mail in these cars was going to be sorted in route, after the mail cars came the baggage and the railway express cars. The reason that the baggage and express cars came after the RPO and the mail cars was that Federal Law stated that "There could be no through traffic through a mail car." Meaning that if the crew needed to get into the baggage car they could not walk through the mail or RPO's. This is why on most of the D&RGW narrow gauge RPO's there are roof walks and hand rails so the crew could get back and forth between the locomotive and the rest of the train.
Most of your Western long haul passenger trains followed the Cal Zephyr model with the coach or chair cars in the front, the diner and lounge in the middle and the Pullmans and sleepers in the rear. The diner / lounge was the dividing line between the regular passenger and the first class passengers.
