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Interesting subject, and a passage I'm sure I passed over without much thought in my first readings. I see the "express train" as translatory license spoken of above. Unfortunately, in the Shire, there were presumably no regularly scheduled methods of transportation to equate it with beyond perhaps some form of postal communication with towns at its perimeter. Minus any institutional conveyance, I think we are left with a hobbit's view of fast-living outsiders, like the men who frequent Bree. Imagine that there may be regular equine postal stops at Bree for a general (human) northern M-e route, and we have something a hobbit might think of as an "express train".
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