The Vicarstown Urban Rail System is the official name of the LRVs at Vicarstown. The system boasts 3 lines and 20 engines. The engines names are Bizzy, Chizzy, Dizzy, Fizzy, Gizzy, Hizzy, Izzy, Jizzy, Kizzy, Khizzy, Lizzy, Mizzy, Pizzy, Quizzy, Rizzy, Sizzy, Shizzy, Tizzy, Vizzy, Wizzy, Yizzy, Zizzy, Zhizzy, and Todd. Everyone thought Todd was a bit odd, they just couldn't put their couplings on why.
The three lines each meet underground at the railway station. From there, Line "A Ocean"runs to the strait, where it climbs onto Strait Street and then goes south to the Marina. The "B Quizzy" line starts in a charmingly industrial part of the island (think the Season 5 shunting yards) and makes its way downtown. Line "C Brenner" cuts diagonally from the south-west suburbs (known as Birch Valley) to the north-east suburbs (known as the Sunrise district). At any moment, 7 LRVs are running on each line, but traffic isn't always, say, very smart.
Neville backed his train down next to the warehouses in the north-western part of the town. It was charming. When you think of a place like this, you think of towering, smoking buildings and overgrown sidings and the trucks all having graffiti on them. No, here were short factories, well-ballasted rails (courtesy of the Arlesdale Railway), and the only markings on the trucks were the letters "NWR". Put that together with the bright blue sky with several beautiful clouds, and you had as close as a Sudrian engine could get to a calm place. His good friend Murdoch, who always longed for peace and relaxation, would enjoy this place for his metidation. Or was it methodition? Neville couldn't remember.
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a train coming. "That's strange," thought Neville, "trains don't come here often." Then, in between two buildings, he saw a strange tram. She looked to be an electric railcar, but with glasses, and there were no points to her tracks in sight.
She spotted him too, and spoke up, "Who are you? We don't see many engines around here anymore."
"I'm Neville, I'm delivering some trucks."
"I'm Quizzy, I'm running my line."
Neville looked at her from wheel to telegraph. She had no buffers, was painted yellow and green, and she was much wider than her standard gauge tracks.
"I didn't know there was a rail line here," said Neville.
"This is Vicarstown's municipal rail system. I'm running my B line. They say I'm in charge because I'm the smartest one."
"That's why I've never seen you, Vicarstown Station is off the ground."
"Is it?" asked Quizzy. Just then, her doors closed, and she trundled off.
Neville was confused. Why didn't Quizzy ever see the station?
Quizzy sped expertly along the line, stopping precisely at every stop. At Stryd St. Station, she found Yizzy.
"There's activity outbound," said Quizzy. "I think that mysterious warehouse is being used."
"The old Sodor Ice. Co building? Why's that mysterious?"
"No, no, the Hatt Railroad Works. The one that stopped being used when that Steamworks at Crovan's Gate."
"The one that Lizzy says is full of zombie workmen, steam engine ghosts and self-aware rails?" shivered Yizzy. She raced away. She wanted to get past the yards so she didn't have to deal with it.
"Wait, I mean there are actual engines there, not ghosts!" But Yizzy was already out of ear shot.
For Quizzy, the main problem with being an LRV was that conversations couldn't last long, compared the NWR who stopped at stations for several minutes. Now Yizzy believed there were ghosts about. Stupid Lizzy.
"Driver," asked Neville on the way to the Blue Mountain Quarry, "why don't the VURS engines know what's in Vicarstown?"
"Well, the LRVs go underground when they reach the downtown area, so as not to disturb traffic."
"Oh," replied Neville.
What, you wanted a longer conversation? Well that's what they really said, so there.
VURS runs 24 hours a day, but each tram gets a two hour long break to cool down and have a maintenance check. The LRVs have a face at each end, so though their minds don't need to sleep, their eyelids do, so they always switch faces. Interestingly enough, this means at least one face is sleeping. Because of this, LRV's have astounding memory because one end is always storing information. Anyway, we're getting really off-topic, so here we go. It was 1 in the morning, and Yizzy had just gotten off her cool-down block. She was making her way up to the B line terminus at Packard and 32nd. She was terrified as she reached the supposed haunted warehouse at Packard and 28th.
Suddenly, she heard a rumbling sound, and a cloud of steam appeared. Then, a large engine steamed out of the cloud!
"The ghost engine!" cried Yizzy. "It's all real!"
The ghost engine puffed another cloud of steam, and some strange figures lurched toward them. Climbing out of the engine, the driver and fireman climbed out of the engine, and the men all walked toward Yizzy.
"Oh no! The zombie workmen want to get driver and the passengers!" Yizzy, very scared indeed, raced away from the platform. But then, a rock-ex-machina in the tracks derailed her!
"The self-aware rails!" shrieked Yizzy. She had absolutely lost it, and now the zombies were catching up The zombies walked in front of her headlights. And she could see that they weren't zombies at all!
"Do you need any assistance?" they asked.
"Yes," said her driver, "no one is hurt, but we'd like a call to the office."
"Of course," said the ghost engine's driver, who handed his phone through the window.
"Then, what was the ghost engine, and the self-aware rails?"
"Ghost engine?!" she heard someone say from afar. "That's what this is all about? All I ask for is for peace and quiet, but you silly little LRVs disturb me because you can't even see a rock on the line!"
The ghost engine's fireman laughed. "That's my engine, Murdoch, not a ghost. And he's right, you did hit a silly old rock. There's absolutely no such things as ghosts!"
The workmen all looked at each other.
Apparently there was a track between the North Western and VURS, and Harvey came to rerail Yizzy, and Lizzy came to serve her route during her off-block, as punishment for spooking Yizzy. Yizzy isn't afraid of ghosts anymore. She thinks it's all silly make-believe.
No one ever told her that the warehouse was being used as a base by Sudrian ghost hunters.