South Manchurian Railway train and ship

The SMR was built to connect what were then the South Manchurian sea towns of Lüshun (Port Arthur) and Dalian (Dairen) on the Liaodong Peninsula (now combined as the city of Dalian) with the Chinese Eastern Railway running across Manchuria (now Northeast China) from Chita in Siberia to the Russian seaport of Vladivostok.

This scene could date from the 1930s. The line was a source of friction between the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was originally built to Russian broad gauge, then cape gauge as used in Japan and then standard gauge.  More here