What is the morphology or etymology of the word 列车? This question is inspired from a recent question here about 列车.

The question: How is this word formed, and/or where does it come from?

(When I am asking this question, I have my own guess: this word is formed by the nominal element 车 referring to 火车, preceded by a noun classifier 列, as in 兩列火车. But I wonder why the noun classifier should precede the noun. In many other phrases the classifier should follow the noun, as in 犬只, 鸡塊, 纸张, 木条. Is 车列 also an acceptable word?)
It's not a classifier here. From dictionary:

列车 lièchē
(1) [train]∶众多连续的车辆。一般指火车,尤指由牵引机车和运货或载客的车厢组成的连挂成列的火车

So you can see, 列 is short for 成列的 (lined up in a row), therefore it's put before 车 as an adj.