Steam Train at Shimbashi Station by Utagawa Hiroshige III (early 1870s). Source.
At last we reached Takasaki -- the place from which the celebrated "land steamer" started on its puffing way to Tokyo. That was the first time that I ever saw a railway train. It looked to me like a long row of little rooms, each with a narrow opening on to the platform.
It was late in the afternoon, and I was so weary that I have little recollection of anything except a scolding from Brother, because I, feeling that I was entering some kind of a house, stepped out of my wooden shoes, leaving them on the platform. Just before the train started, they were handed in at the window by an official whose special duty it was to gather all the shoes from the platform before the starting of every train. I went to sleep at once, and the next thing I knew we were in Tokyo.
Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, A Daughter of the Samurai, page 117.
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