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Christleton Junction - 1986 - Gateway to North Wales


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3 hours ago, 61656 said:

I had considered them, but their 3A current rating (as far as I could work out) was a little low. I think the Seep point motors probably pull 5A; I did start doing the calculations but decided it was more effort than it was worth. I use 5A as a sort of default value to ensure that everything has a decent life expectancy. 
 

That said, I may well change my mind when I’ve soldered up a few 15 way D-types!

 

Soldering was something I was trying to avoid, or at least compartmentalise onto small veroboards / stripboards. Once the veroboards are assembled, there is little or no more soldering to do, and certainly none of it upside down.

 

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Putting off wiring is one of my few genuine talents in the field of model railways and I’ve managed to put that skill to good use in recent weeks. Like a defender who inexplicably rounds two strikers and finds himself coolly slotting the ball past his own keeper, so I found myself tonight wielding the soldering iron. 
 

Having been short on modelling time of late, a few issues with the 400 year old homestead had put my passion for wiring lower down the list than checking the rodent traps. But with an unexpected evening to myself I poured a very agreeable beer and wandered in to the railway room determined to do something other than wiring. I should probably find a beer forum where I can relax and occasionally mention model trains. Anyway, I’d noticed an annoying track joint that needed sorting, and before I knew it a happy hour had passed and 28 wires had been soldered at both ends. 
 

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Previously I had soldered every rail to a central busbar under the board to provide a continuous power feed. That is probably a little over the top and resulted in a lot of wire and quite an untidy appearance. This time I’m just jumpering across rail joins. As the rails are soldered too, this should be reliable enough for a layout which won’t be moving very often. 
 

Hopefully another opportunity for an ale will appear shortly and I can press on. Potentially if I have a skin-full the layout will pretty much wire itself. 

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Another spare couple of hours sees all  the track feeds complete. So just 4 hours, on board 1 of 4 (currently built, probably 12 in total), to complete the simplicity that is DCC’s 2 wires. It’s undoubtedly good news for the UK’s brewing industry. 
 

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Fans of my all black wiring colour code will be pleased to see the end feeds are all labelled. 
 

Next up is the point motor and frog wiring. I need to build a ‘local’ control panel for the points, to simulate the hand points of the depot. 
 

Once that’s done, in theory I can run a few trains up and down on that board alone. A good friend of mine observes that a part built model railway is a soul destroying thing and at this stage I’m inclined to agree. My father’s suggestion of build the layout a foot at a time seems to hold some water. At least until I feel inclined to wire the next board up!

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I managed to grab a spare hour over the weekend to start the point wiring. Each motor has been fitted with its own make up of diodes and capacitors, with connections to each solenoid and the common. I could then test each motor properly with a pair of flying leads. Pleasingly they all swing both ways without any issues. I’m using 2200uF caps which seems to provide just the right amount of umph for a single end of points. 
 

I’ve started making a very basic local panel for the 5 ends on this board, as they are all hand points. Potentially there could be something running on this board this year. 
 

3A73AD07-F5D5-43BD-B9A5-24AEC8DD05DA.jpeg.f72a760b3ff828f46f2f49c0452d0da5.jpeg

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20 hours ago, 61656 said:

I managed to grab a spare hour over the weekend to start the point wiring. Each motor has been fitted with its own make up of diodes and capacitors, with connections to each solenoid and the common. I could then test each motor properly with a pair of flying leads. Pleasingly they all swing both ways without any issues. I’m using 2200uF caps which seems to provide just the right amount of umph for a single end of points. 
 

I’ve started making a very basic local panel for the 5 ends on this board, as they are all hand points. Potentially there could be something running on this board this year. 
 

3A73AD07-F5D5-43BD-B9A5-24AEC8DD05DA.jpeg.f72a760b3ff828f46f2f49c0452d0da5.jpeg

Looking good. I remember reading a rule-of-thumb years ago, possibly in the RM article back in the 70s describing how to build a CD unit, saying that 1500uF per motor was about right.

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10 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Looking good. I remember reading a rule-of-thumb years ago, possibly in the RM article back in the 70s describing how to build a CD unit, saying that 1500uF per motor was about right.

I can’t remember why I first used 2200uF. I have tried 1100, but that doesn’t provide enough force to be reliable. I suspect that hand built points probably require a bit more persuading to start moving. I’ll be using 4800uF for crossovers, possibly a little more if one end is a 4 blade double slip, due to the additional force to overcome (not least because the switch rails are shorter so do more bending than they do sliding).

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A little more progress on the wiring. The point motors have all been connected to a terminal block together with their respective frogs (colour coded green for obvious reasons).  
 

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That pretty much concludes the underboard wiring; there are just a couple more connections to make. I then need to make up the 9 way and 15 way connectors that will link to the neighbouring boards and panels. 
 

There is also the connection to the local ‘shunt frame’ which controls the 5 hand points on this board, which will be connected directly to the 19 way terminal block. 
 

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The shunt frame has had the point motor power wires connected, using earth blocks each side as busbars. The 4 depot hand points have also had their frog feeds common-ed together. The yard point for the Brewery is in a different track section, so has a different feed for the frog. 

 

My goal of having a loco moving in the shed under its own power this year (without bodging) moves a step closer. 

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Board 2 has had its wiring completed. It is all tested, at least using a meter, but we all know that's not how you test a model railway! It was pleasing to flip the board the right way up and find that all the points move nicely from side to side and the all the frog polarities switched correctly. I did change one tie bar as the existing one had a soldered joint to the switch rail very close to the insulating gap.The shunt frame is fitted to the front of the board using some small hinges, to allow easier access to the wiring. The 3x3 3PDT solder connections were much easier than I expected, which is fortunate as the crossovers on other boards need a 4PDT switch.

 

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Overall I'm happy with the appearance of the wiring; it's much neater than the last effort. Even the 15 way D-types have proved quite straightforward to fit. 

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Next job is to wire up a 15 way D type so that I can connect all the track section to the track bus temporarily and allow some trains to run up and down over the festive period.

 

I then plan to split my time, for the sake of my sanity, between wiring board 3 and beginning to build the loco depot and brewery. Both of which will require some very agreeable research!

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And just like that, a train was running again. Stalwart class 40 D211 (one day it will be D200) rolled the first wheels and proved both continuity and point switching. The class 33 then became the first to shunt in and out of the brewery yard. 


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Prior to that I’d needed to quickly wire up a 15 way D type connector. All the terminals are tinned with a bit of solder first. 
 

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Each wire is then soldered on. I tend to expose about 8mm of wire, quickly tin it and then cut it back to about 4mm. This allows the wire to neatly solder in with minimum exposed conductor. 
 

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Wire tends to naturally curl back to its coiled form, but briefly after being tinned it’s soft enough and can be neatly straightened, which avoids 15 wires all fighting with each other. 
 

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Once all the wires are on, I use a thin blade or similar to just check no stray solder is shorting the terminals. I then put a small amount of washing up liquid on which allows the coloured sleeves to easily slide home. 
 

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I’m not bothering with connector hoods, but I would if the layout was going to be regularly dismantled. 
 

With one board done, it feels like a major milestone has been passed. Once again I can hear the sounds of a cold Sulzer engine firing up and a warning horn sounding as a loco moves off. 
 

In theory I can now turn to a range of modelling activities, although I will have a reasonable guess I’ll choose wiring board 3!

 

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6 hours ago, 61656 said:

 It is all tested, at least using a meter, but we all know that's not how you test a model railway!

Principles testing is so much more fun than ‘strap and function’. :-)

Thanks for the washing up liquid trick  to getting sleeves on.

Paul.

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1 hour ago, 61656 said:

And just like that, a train was running again. Stalwart class 40 D211 (one day it will be D200) rolled the first wheels and proved both continuity and point switching. The class 33 then became the first to shunt in and out of the brewery yard. 


EA8E43AB-6C57-478B-82E5-0BDCEB7EB93D.jpeg.373c90518934f1afdfb990a67d2f9f3b.jpeg

 

Prior to that I’d needed to quickly wire up a 15 way D type connector. All the terminals are tinned with a bit of solder first. 
 

2072E4E6-BFA0-4471-9242-6A45496E4244.jpeg.8dbdff43b58dd3dd82ee5433502787f6.jpeg
 

Each wire is then soldered on. I tend to expose about 8mm of wire, quickly tin it and then cut it back to about 4mm. This allows the wire to neatly solder in with minimum exposed conductor. 
 

164E86C3-CF44-4D73-930B-A8F934D0D5CA.jpeg.3a0ff04392f3b74fa4f41c9d9a27f824.jpeg

 

Wire tends to naturally curl back to its coiled form, but briefly after being tinned it’s soft enough and can be neatly straightened, which avoids 15 wires all fighting with each other. 
 

C2246437-6E18-49D1-A08F-15E5303A0AB5.jpeg.8246f2a9aab71c6eebe70e4372a0d13d.jpeg

 

Once all the wires are on, I use a thin blade or similar to just check no stray solder is shorting the terminals. I then put a small amount of washing up liquid on which allows the coloured sleeves to easily slide home. 
 

47838966-935E-43F0-A362-F8B462E6D8DF.jpeg.6f5ad9bf248ee5fdd88f05cdc21cf0bc.jpeg

 

I’m not bothering with connector hoods, but I would if the layout was going to be regularly dismantled. 
 

With one board done, it feels like a major milestone has been passed. Once again I can hear the sounds of a cold Sulzer engine firing up and a warning horn sounding as a loco moves off. 
 

In theory I can now turn to a range of modelling activities, although I will have a reasonable guess I’ll choose wiring board 3!

 

I like the sleeves. Are they just scraps of insulation or heat-shrink or something else?

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10 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

I like the sleeves. Are they just scraps of insulation or heat-shrink or something else?

They are these little chaps:  https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/cable-sleeves/3031877/

 

I use 24/0.2 wire which is a nice interference fit. I'm also from Yorkshire, so I cut the sleeves into halves...

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11 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Principles testing is so much more fun than ‘strap and function’. :-)

Thanks for the washing up liquid trick  to getting sleeves on.

Paul.

It's a handy trick, not least because the sleeves don't like sliding alongside each other, but also it will confirm beyond doubt that cheap washing up liquid is much lower quality.

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8 hours ago, coronach said:

A great layout in the making - very realistic track geometry.  I look forward to seeing further developments.

 Time for the first update of the year, prompted by Coronach's post....

 

Having been full of enthusiasm for modelling in what is now referred to as Twixtmas, I was fortunate to have a few days away with Mrs 61656 in Chester. We spent a very enjoyable day drinking our way around the city, managing to drop in to Chester Model Centre along the way before finding the just as excellent Cavern of the Curious Gnome. I recommend both and I'm still not entirely sure which one took more money off me. Suffice it to say I managed to acquire both the least and most powerful locos running on the network in 1986 (I think, although I now wonder if an APT power car had more horses). I'm sure you can work them out / prove me very wrong.

 

When I returned home for a quick run on the 5 feet of available track, the wind was somewhat knocked out of my sails when both locos ran terribly. It was one of those moments of shear deflation.

 

I had been slowly building myself up for a return to action, when unexpectedly in a work meeting this week I noticed the "gentleman" next to me (gentleman is a broad term and only loosely associated with signal engineers) was pursuing RMweb. We'd hardly started the tentative "you too?" discussion when before we knew it about 6 people were all confessing to be signed up members. The closet door was well and truly off its hinges!

 

Suitably inspired by the ensuing conversation I had a great evening sorting both locos out and a handful of track issues with the end result that all works well and I'm ready to face up to putting off wiring the next board.

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I’ve managed to find a few hours recently to get on with the wiring for board 3, which is obviously the second board to be wired! I’m a big believer in learning from mistakes and if you read this thread there’s a lot to learn; indeed the net savings you’re making just by following along almost certainly justifies that loco purchase you’ve been mulling over.

 

I decided that my revised point motor wiring would have sufficient oomph to move all 4 blades of a double slip with a single motor, but thought I best try it first. I should probably have tried it on a single end before fitting new single tie-bars to each slip. One failed trial later and I gained the opportunity to take out and refit double tie-bars at each end of 3 slips, 12 in total. That set back behind me though and the rest of the wiring has gone well so far. All 20 point ends (which make up 8 sets) on this board are now wired and tested. A few ends needed tweaking to get them to move nicely, but overall it was all straightforward.

 

Next up is the frog wiring and then all the track feeds. This is far and away the most complex board, so I’ll be glad to see the back of it. I need to start thinking about a temporary panel to control the points as it will interface directly to this board, I think it will be a simple (i.e. unnecessarily complicated) mimic panel, with just point controls for the moment.

 

It would be great to be sharing pictures of a no-heat peak on a coast-bound relief service formed of a scratch rake of mark 1’s, but you’ll just have to imagine that for yourself for now.

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Hi 61656. I hope you and your family are keeping well in these strange circumstances. Amongst other things, I hope you manage to find some quality time to further develop your layout and get that steam heat Peak going :)

 

R

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It’s been a while to say the least - I don’t think I’ve ever been as busy as during lockdown. A combination of work, home schooling and a crazy desire to get on with renovating the house has left me with very little time for the railway. At least one of the jobs I’ve managed to do on the house though is to sort the small roof leak (there’s no such thing as a small roof leak), which was managing to allow water two flights downstairs and several lateral metres to reveal itself. This means the growing brown stain in the alcove should hopefully have finished growing.

 

Yesterday I managed to set aside most of the afternoon and evening to finish the wiring on board 3 and start the temporary control panel. Eventually (ha) I’ll have a nice NX style panel with full route setting, but I always intended something less ambitious to allow trains to run. The inability to go buy the parts I need actually ended up making the job even simpler, as I have just used an offcut of MDF, which happens to be in Eau de Nil.

 

The switches are in, except one, I miss calculated the number I needed. They are all either 3PDT or 4PDT; effectively a DPDT to operate the point motor and then either an SPDT or DPDT to switch the frogs. It all looks quite neat until you work out it needs 216 wires soldering up. I always pre-tin the terminals with solder and I’m using the rubber sleeves again to ensure there are no stray strands to cause short circuits. The one switch I got wrong is for the double junction, I forgot that the diamond crossing also needs wiring. Luckily Farnell are still dispatching switches. The big earth blocks make really good busbars when you have 34 feeds off each one too. 

 

I’ve got 68 of the wires done and it’s not a complete rats’ nest yet!

 

Roll on that no heat Peak.... (I think it would be no heat by 1986, I don’t know when steam boilers were isolated, but I think earlier than 86, at least south of the border).

 

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A little more progress on the panel wiring. I was pretty pleased with the neat run of terminal blocks down the right hand side for the point drives, until I realised the massive flamingo-up*, resulting in the extra pair stuck out on their own. Oh well. I also remembered just in time that some points need some counter-conditional locking on them; both sets of 3 way points (to prevent the switch blades pushing against each other) and the pair for the double junction (to try to prevent short circuiting on the diamond crossing). I’ll probably do it for  the sole trap point too (for reasons connected with questionable sanity).

 

Essentially each point is driven by a DPDT switch that simply reverses the polarity, normal being +24V and reverse is -24V. For most points the lower connectors are normal (+-) and the top ones are reverse (-+). By feeding one set off the centre connectors of another point’s DPDT terminals you can prevent unwanted point combinations. I can sketch this out if anyone really wants to see how it works. I’ve actually taken the feed off the terminal blocks, which are easier to get 2 wires into than soldering 2 wires onto a switch’s terminal. This will need properly testing before connecting to the point motors (see earlier reference to flamingoes).

 

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I think that’s 84 of 216...

 

* like a cock-up, only bigger.

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21 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

1982 rings a bell but that's just from my ageing memory.

I think I’ve seen pictures later than that, particularly for relief services. For regular services outside of Scotland that sounds about right. I’m trying to think if the class 40s still had boilers until withdrawal, which would have seen steam heat until Jan 85.

 

My 1987 Platform 5 (which is theoretically correct for January 87, so a useful record for 1986) has about 20 locos still boiler fitted. All are 37s or 47s at Eastfield (Glasgow), plus 40122 and oddly the departmental class 24 - maybe for testing or just possibly for use with an inspection saloon? Certainly all the 45/0s had their boilers isolated before then.

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On 27/04/2020 at 22:30, 61656 said:

A little more progress on the panel wiring. I was pretty pleased with the neat run of terminal blocks down the right hand side for the point drives, until I realised the massive flamingo-up*, resulting in the extra pair stuck out on their own. Oh well. I also remembered just in time that some points need some counter-conditional locking on them; both sets of 3 way points (to prevent the switch blades pushing against each other) and the pair for the double junction (to try to prevent short circuiting on the diamond crossing). I’ll probably do it for  the sole trap point too (for reasons connected with questionable sanity).

 

Essentially each point is driven by a DPDT switch that simply reverses the polarity, normal being +24V and reverse is -24V. For most points the lower connectors are normal (+-) and the top ones are reverse (-+). By feeding one set off the centre connectors of another point’s DPDT terminals you can prevent unwanted point combinations. I can sketch this out if anyone really wants to see how it works. I’ve actually taken the feed off the terminal blocks, which are easier to get 2 wires into than soldering 2 wires onto a switch’s terminal. This will need properly testing before connecting to the point motors (see earlier reference to flamingoes).

 

92D8E664-41FC-4B86-9C87-64AD2BDD7B87.jpeg.43ae752d24244f469a7b22ee5cc84586.jpeg

 

I think that’s 84 of 216...

 

* like a cock-up, only bigger.

Yes! - I thought it was only me who used that excellent bit of 90s comedy!

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What you might called an evening of mixed fortunes! I’ve managed over the last week to steadily progress the panel wiring and tonight saw the last wires soldered up. Next stage is to give it a test to ensure that everything is configured correctly.

 

It’s not quite as messy as I thought it was going to be!

 

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Now all that remains is to connect the terminal blocks to some d-type connectors. Luckily my father found he had 6 pairs of 25 way d-types with screw connectors and 6 x 3m cables - just the ticket and it should save a few hours of soldering. They are in the post so I should be able to get them connected next weekend.

 

With a little time available at the end of the evening, I decided to pull the boards all out and give the inside of the alcove a coat of stain stop to neaten it all up. Luckily I took all the boards and few bits of stock to the other end of the room first. I’m normally quite fastidious about painting, but as this will hardly be seen I decided a quick wire brush would be more than enough. I’d just finished off and was about to open the paint, when I suspected I could see a slight bulge in the ceiling of the alcove. This is no surprise given how much water has been able to penetrate (the room above needs taking right back to brick work). So I gave it a little tap...

 

The alcove ceiling is at most 600mm by 300mm, the floor above barely 100mm higher, so the debris must have been stored at 3 or 4 times atmospheric pressure to explain the volume that came down, including a former squirrels nest, a former mouses nest and 2 former mice. At this point I should have been grateful for being the anal sort of chap who has lids for all his storage crates; sadly I was regretting being the lazy kind of spoon that keeps the lids handily underneath the crates...

 

Luckily a ceiling collapse is a clear contravention of rule 23.3b, meaning that beer was allowed to be opened to assist with the next hour of clearing up. It should be possible to fix it with some plasterboard quite easily, and compared to the alternative of it falling on the railway, probably a bit of a let off!

 

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With a lot more work than was expected, the alcove was finally sorted and dry-lined. This meant I could crack on with the final bits of panel wiring. There was quite a bit of messing about getting all the final wires done and then I was ready for testing. I spent a couple of evenings bell testing every combination I could think of, which proved its worth in identifying  a couple of errors, but nothing serious. I also did quite a bit of wire pulling to confirm soldered joints and screwed terminals were all firm. I then spent a further evening just with the point motor supply connected checking the throw of all the points and confirming that each frog switched polarity correctly.

 

This led to a satisfying evening using the class 40 to test everything for real, with everything working at the first time of asking. Compared to the previous board there was a lot less fettling required with the file to sort out dodgy soldering. Possibly the first time in my career that a lesson has been learnt rather than merely repeated!

 

The first photo show the connectors that my father found, which have proved to be a real time saver. They are labelled as WMRC but otherwise have no clues as to origin; I suspect a special item manufactured by a clever club member somewhere. It’s meant all the traditional white terminal blocks have been replaced.

 

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Next up is the panel during end to end testing. It was surprisingly quick and easy to give everything a test.

 

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Finally the two wired boards are connected together and the peak’s headlights confirm that the track is live. There’s a lot of work to paint the track to make it more visually appealing, but that’s low down the job list at the moment.

 

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Finally a close up shot; I’m quite happy with how the trackwork stands up to close inspection. More importantly the slips seem to allow smooth running, which is the ultimate aim of the exercise.

 

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There’s enough track now to run a few locos about, but it’s like a tantalising trailer for the full feature film that isn’t out yet. I need to knock up some legs for the panel which will free-up the work bench ready for the next board. Number 4 is up next, which has the second highest number of point ends (11, against 17 on board 3) and no double slips. I have even allowed myself to start thinking about building the next baseboards! 

 

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  • Craftsmanship/clever 4
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