“Take a local, take an express, don’t get off ‘til you reach success”

“Take a local, take an express, don’t get off ‘til you reach success” is a motivational rhyme that was printed in The Echo (New Lebanon, NY) on March 6, 1951. It refers to local and express trains—probably in New York City—and this is used as a metaphor for career success. The lines were often printed in autograph albums of the 1950s.
 
 
Old Fulton New York Post Cards
6 March 1951, The Echo (New Lebanon, NY), pg. 1, left masthead:
Take a local, take an express, don’t get off ‘til you reach success.
 
New York State Historic Newspapers
9 March 1951, The News-Herald (Ravena, NY), pg. 1, left masthead:
Take a local, take an express, don’t get off ‘til you reach success.
 
Old Fulton New York Post Cards
13 March 1951, The Echo (New Lebanon, NY), pg. 1, left masthead:
Take a local, take an express, don’t get off ‘til you reach success.
 
Google Books
The Slide Area:
Scenes of Hollywood Life
By Gavin Lambert
New York, NY: Viking Press
1959
Pg. 43:
Take a local,
Take an express.
Don’t get off
Till you reach success.
 
Google Books
America’s Folklorist:
A. A. Bodkin and American Culture
Edited by Lawrence Rodgers and Jerrold Hirsch
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press
2010
Pg. 206:
At school they wrote in each other’s autograph albums:
 
Take a local,
Take an express.
Don’t get off
Till you reach success.