For the Blue Train from Tokyo to Hakata:
I blogged about the Blue Train a couple of years ago ( Sadly the pictures have vanished in a Word Press update along the way……). Significantly slower than the more famous Shinkansen, or bullet train, these trains nonetheless have a certain ambiance to them and were, in earlier times, the way the working Citizen Sato saved some yen when trying to go from one end of this long country to another. The lines ran between the major cities in Japan , and as you can probably guess, ran at night. The two I have ridden on left Tokyo at 6pm and 10:30pm respectively. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and at the time-having been in Japan all of 4 months thought it was an awesome adventure.
Sigh-all the good things are going away………