Train Village

Train Village is a Lovian village on central Peace Island in the State of Sylvania. It has has approximately 700 inhabitants, not including those of the mountain hamlet Clave Rock, located to Train Village's west.

Etymology
Train Village has been called this way since its foundation in 1880 and was named after the train depot situated in this area. This village consisted of houses of people who worked at the train depot, which would later become a modern railway station. After a long period of modernisation, Train Village had lost its image of "just a railway station" thus more and more people started asking themselves if this name would still fit the village. But the original name has been kept, although many proposals have been made. Between 1905 and 2009, Nicholasville was named Orkan, a Train Village Dutch version of the word "hurricane".

History
Train Village was founded back in 1880 as a small train depot with a few houses and shops for the workers at the depot, near the Highland Mines where another village was founded, called Clave Rock. The founder and mayor of Train Village, James Xavier de la Mekers, helped build up the place into a small village. However, it originally served as a connection between Noble City and the Highland Mines in Clave Rock and not as a neat place to live in.

Thus Train Village had a incredibly bad image in Lovia during the first half of the 20th century. It would have been a filthy, small and boring village, far away from important places like Noble City and Newhaven. Governor and Former Mayor of Train Village Robbert Joe said that "only people who don't have opportunities would consider living there". Many owners of the Highland Mines became Mayor of Train Village, put by the State Government, just to assure that the transportation of coles wouldn't become too exprensive. One could state that there was a high concurrention between Train Village and the Mining companies in Hurbanova.

An important turning point in Train Village's history was the year of 1957. The Highland Mines were closed and Train Village was obliged to find other sources of income. But it was not a chosen moment, as a famine was occuring in Lovia and many people had already fled to the cities. The village impoverished even more, until the hungry population decided to start farming in this fertile region. Many farms were built east and north of Train Village.

In the sixties, Train Village got the chance to flourish. Nicholasville, a part of the farms, was being incorporated and after that the Town Hall decided to open a market, where farmers can sell their products. New shops and bars opened their doors and the population found new jobs in the tertiary sector of the economy.

In the last decades, Mayors tried to maintain the green spaces and invested in parks. Many schools were built and tourism started developping. Little by little, Train Village became a quiet, green and neat town where one can live properly, far away from the city's noise. Between 1999 and 2008, Train Village was named Orkan.

During the June 2008 Floods, the dikes situated north of Train Village broke, thus the town was inundated for a couple of days. One casualty was made, caught by a flash flooding. Surprisingly enough it was the Mayor, Garry James, who had found his death. In honor of the Former Mayor, Alexandru Latin named a local park after him.

Geography
Train Village lies north east of the Emerald Highlands and the Beaver River, very close to the Highland Mines which were situated on a branch of the Beaver River west of Train Village. It's a region dominated by hills and forests, like the Pologne Forest which surrounds Train Village. The town officially makes part of the Train Village Plains that stretches from Stephen Headland to East Sylvania and Noble City. Although the name "Train Village Plains", as we've said, Train Village is situated in a hilly area. The plains start north of Train Village and is loved by farmers. West of Train Village flows the Ginger Source.

Train Village is connected to Noble City, by the Trans Sylvanian Railway and Highway 1. Another road leaves Train Village in the west and connects Train Village to the hamlets of Clave Rock and East Hills (Oceana) and goes southwest to Hurbanova.

Population
In the last decade, the population of Train Village stayed stable around the 900 inhabitants. However, in March 2008 approximately 721 were counted. That month, Pierlot McCrooke began as a Mayor and expanded the town. In June 2008, only three months later, a sensational number of 2,205 inhabitants was counted. Probably the farmers around the town of Train Village had been included in the census.

In 2009, the town's population shrinked though. After the June 2008 Floods, many people fled to higher places in the Emerald Highlands which caused a new instable period in Train Village. As of November 2009, 1,484 people lived in Train Village. Since Alexandru Latin had became Mayor, the town is developping and modernising and the population started growing again. In December 2009, estimations stated that approximately 1,900 people would be living in Train Village at the moment and 200 in the neighboring hamlet Clave Rock.

Politics
Train Village is ruled by a Mayor and Nicholasville also has got a local chairman. Both of them are free functions, thus no elections have to be held, although the State of Sylvania with its government in Noble City has always had a big influence concerning the choice of the Train Village Mayor.

The town's population has always been leftist. However during the past decades, the population's political preferences have moved to the center. The Progressive Central Party had overwhelmingly been dominating Train Village until the foundation of the Liberal Democrats, which is gaining more support under the local population. In November 2009, a Liberal Democrat became Mayor of Train Village and because of his influence in this Lovian political party, he succeeded in adding a couple of view points which would be in favour of TV'ers, gaining him and his party more support in this region.

List of Mayors

 * James Xavier de la Mekers 1880-1887
 * Diet Kashubian 1887-1900
 * Felix McCrooke 1900-1924
 * Robbert Joe 1924-1945
 * Rick Mayer 1945-1957
 * Sam McBither 1957-1980
 * Rob Quince 1980-2002
 * Garry James 2002-2008
 * Pierlot McCrooke 2008-2009,
 * Alexandru Latin 2009-2010
 * Pierlot McCrooke 2010
 * Marcus Villanova 2010 (about one month)

Town divisions
Train Village officialy consists of two neighborhoods: Downtown and Nicholasville. However, locals started dividing the town in different ways, based on other points of view. The westernmost part of the town is the Center, where one can find shops, bars, the stadium, administrative buildings, schools, the railway station, etc, all of them situated in Downtown. In the east, in Nicholasville, there is the zone Agriculture, which contains several farms and a market with farmer products. Between these two zones, are the houses of the inhabitants, spread over Downtown and Nicholasville.

In the past, people were used to talk about the "Old Town" (West Downtown) and the "New Town" (East Downtown and West Nicholasville), although after several periods of modernisation, one can no longer talk about an Old Town, thus the term disappeared.

Town map of Downtown

 * *1 - Subway Street 
 * *2 - Monorail Street