Express train

1906, Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children, Chapter 4: The engine-burglar, All sorts of dreadful thoughts came to her all together in one horrible flash. There were such things as express trains that went on, she supposed, for hundreds of miles without stopping. Suppose this should be one of them? How would she get home again? She had no money to pay for the return journey.

King's Messenger, 1918-1940: Memoirs of a Silver Greyhound. By George P. Antrobus, O.B.E., King's Foreign Service Messenger 1918-1940. London: Herbert Jenkins Ltd. Price 10s. 6d. net. [...] "The great European express trains have an air of mystery and romance about them. Truth to tell, this is but ill-deserved. Except over the French portion of their journey they have no right to the title of express"—he was writing of conditions before the great speed-up of the last decade— [...].

For all the attention on express trains, it's often local trains that tip the railway into congestion.