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James Harrison

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Blog Entries posted by James Harrison

  1. James Harrison
    Progress has slowed somewhat on the D11... I managed to get as far as building the tender and adding Romford bearings, and bulking out the frames around the tender axles to stop the wheelsets falling out. I have a tender now that actually wants to move....
     
    ... But then I remembered that even before starting my L1 I had a Mainline LMS 57' brake third on the workbench. I've posted somewhere on the boards about my conversions of ex-Mainline (now Bachmann) LMS stock into something that looks GC-ish. The process, for those that haven't read the thread, is quite simple. You take apart the donor carriage to its components and leave them in paint stripper for a few days. After drying the body off you have to remove, either with dremel or sandpaper or a scalpel, all of the beading, and the roof ventilators. Then you have to make the matchboarding, a simple but fairly mind-numbing process of taking a 10mm strip of paper, marking vertical lines on it at 1mm intervals, and then measuring up each lower panel of the carriage and cutting a corresponding length of the strip. Then you have to score into the paper on each vertical line using a scalpel, roll it up and roll it back out again (this whole process is to make the matchboarding effect more noticeable), then glue it (I used UHU) onto the carriage body.
     
    You end up with something that might look a bit of a mess (all photos are of the first carriage I converted):
     

     
    Now the next stage is to paint it. For the teak I use a double coat of Humbrol #118 and then drybrush some Humbrol #10 over it. On the interior I use one coat of Humrol #118, and for the upholstery and floor I use either Oxford Blue (Humbrol #115, I think?) for first class or Wine (Humbrol #73) for third. In third class as well I paint the compartment walls with Humbrol #60 to give a creamy finish (this inspired by the internal finishing of an GNR compartment carriage preserved on the Severn Valley Railway).
     
    The roof and toilet windows are painted matt white.
     

     
    I then re-assemble the carriage and paint the solebars and footboards with Humbrol #118. Once transfers and varnish are added I work the teak over with some artists' chalks (generally the browns), which brings the teak up to a nice lustre. At the same time I work some greys and black over the roof and dirty browns over the underframe. Eventually I end up with something like this:
     

     
    It's not 100% right but it certainly has the look of GC rolling stock. I've two more to convert after the one I'm working on...
     
    ....not to mention the trio of Ratio Midland carriages I've decided to rebuild, the seven Hornby clerestories I'm going to work up, the Ratio carriage that arrived in the post this morning and the pair of Ian Kirk kits I ordered last night- a buffet car and a 7 1/2 compartment composite. And my old Hornby teaks....
  2. James Harrison
    Hot on the heels of the L1 comes the next loco project....
     
    .... a BEC whitemetal 'Improved Director'.
     
    This is a kit I bought late last year and for reasons I'm now starting to remember put in the 'I'll get round to it someday' pile.
     
    Well today was that day and I'm starting to regret it, though I must say I do enjoy a challenge.
     
    The first problem was a biggie.... the castings are buckled. The footplate I straightened out by gluing the splashers to it fore and aft and then applying pressure in the middle of the splashers using pliers. The boiler halves were the real issue; they went together nicely at the back and around the smokebox but part at the the bottom of the front and in the middle.... it took a fair amount of fettling, and I'm sorry to say some colourful language, to get them back straight-ish. They're still not quite right now.
     

     

     
    I was able to use the boiler fittings from the kit, though I did replace the chimney with a spare casting from the L1 kit (the L1 and D10/ D11 share the same boiler diagram- I'm not entirely sure this extended to boiler fittings but the L1 casting was so much neater than the BEC example).
     
    Overall at the moment- bleurgh. Just look at the amount of filler I've had to use to fill in the worst of the gaps.... and I've still to go back over it once the glue has dried. Oh yes, I'm gluing this together with UHU. The last time I used a soldering iron I managed to pick up the hot end....
     
    The basic model's gone together easily enough, but I think that the experience has been enough at the moment to put me off whitemetal kits. The material strikes me as being too soft and pliable for larger castings like boilers and the fact it melts at low temperature has put me off soldering it. I think if I decide to go down the metal kit route, I'll go for brass ones.
  3. James Harrison
    I've been working a little, here and there, on my Dean Sidings L1 (progress has slowed somewhat because the kitchen table I usually work on is buried under shelves at the moment).
     
    Last time I wrote that I was considering replacing the cast resin coal rails, which I considered the weakest point of the kit. I was planning to use brass wire for this and solder throughout, but when I was looking at prototype photos it became apparent that although the rails are circular in section, the bars they back onto are not. This conspired, along with a shortage of appropriate brass bar and nowhere to solder safely, in putting the brakes onto the idea of using metal.
     
    So what I did instead was fall back onto my stocks of styrene strip. The rails are lengths of 0.5mm plastic rod whilst the bars are slivers of 0.5mm plastic sheet. I glued them together using UHU glue, and then arranged the rails using fine tweezers as the glue set. Once they had set solid I was able to UHU them onto the locomotive.
     
    So;
     
    Before:
     

     
    After:
     

     
    Sure they need a little cleaning up but already they're a massive improvement over the model as supplied.
  4. James Harrison
    With the chassis completed I've been able to at least start the bodywork. The body comes as a single cast resin block, with a myriad of whitemetal castings tgo complete the model.
     
    With the L1 you get a choice of no fewer than three different chimneys, two domes, two safety valves and a top feed. This is where drawings and photographs really come into their own....
     
    I already knew that the L1's originally carried tall domes which were swapped in the 1930s for shorter, squatter examples to bring them into the LNER composite loading gauge. Similarly I knew that they originally carried GC Robinson chimneys, which were swapped for an austere flowerpot design and then swapped again for a shorter version of the Robinson design. Much the same happened with the other boiler fittings- originally equipped with top feeds which were removed at some point and with Robinson-pattern safety valves which were swapped for Ross pops at some point.
     
    The problem is that the article in the April 1973 Railway Modeller is rather vague on dates when these parts were swapped over. Whilst I'm not fastidious about these things as a general rule, it is also a general rule of mine that models I build are accurate to the best of my knowledge. So the very fact of knowing that they were swapped over dictated that I should make every effort to make sure I got the right set of parts fitted to suit my chosen period- which would be 1925-30.
     
    Luckily the article had a nice clear photo of #5276 at Neasden in 1924, which provided me with a prototype to model. The loco is more or less in GCR condition in LNER livery, though interestingly even at this early date it had lost its top feed (a bullet dodged there, I feel- I'd have just fitted it regardless without the photo).
     
    So the work of an hour or so today saw the holes drilled out for the handrails and boiler fittings, and the latter fitted.
     

     

     
    The next step is going to be to sort out the coal rails, which in my opinion let the rest of the model down badly. Quite how I'll manage this I'm not quite sure, though I'm leaning toward lengths of copper or brass wire, soldered up and then UHU'd into the insides of the bunker.
  5. James Harrison
    Yesterday I mentioned how I got started on my L1, and promptly got myself stuck.
     
    Well, as it turns out sometimes it's good to just go away for a few hours... and then it all becomes crystal clear.
     
    The main problems I had encountered yesterday were of the order of trying to shoe-horn a chassis under the L1 for which the kit hadn't been designed... well happily I can say I've succeeded.
     

     

     
    These two images show how far I managed to get yesterday.... basically building up the extra chassis components that come with the kit and then adding them to the jinty chassis (although the kit does come with screws to attach these bits, I found they were too tight to fit the holes, so re-used the screws already on the chassis). Cleverly, the pony truck and bogie are designed to fit into the holes that are left behind when the tension lock couplings are removed.
     
    The first alteration I made was to file down the pony truck a little. By this what I mean is I filed away some the material either side of the screw fitting it to the chassis- although it fit perfectly well as supplied, there wasn't all that much sideplay in it and I somewhat doubted that it would be able to negotiate curves.
     
    Having filed away part of the inside of the body to get it to sit lower down on the chassis, I found I also had to file away parts of the cab floor to get the chassis to sit level within the body. As this meant removing the ability for a snug fit I was a little concerned about how to make a semi-permanent joint betwixt body and chassis. Thinking about it last night it struck me that if I glued the cab floor to the chassis rather than the body I can make a snug fit between the floor and cab, which neatly side-stepped the problem. Working on the the model this morning I discovered that tyhe cab floor is moulded with a raised portion, which filed down a little fits neatly into the 'horns' on the back of the jinty chassis which are intended to hold the jinty's body on:
     

     
    So I fitted it into these horns and then liberally applied UHU to the area to get a nice strong joint. You will note at this point I had removed the bogie, to improve access.
     
    And then with the body fitted:
     

     

     
    The body appears to have been moulded straight and true; the only area this doesn't hold up is around the coal rails- they dip in towards the cab. I don't know if this is a fault with the moulding or a part of the original design; immediately above the rails are the cab windows, so if I were to removed them and replace them with wire to get a more level finish I'd be stymied. I must remember to get that copy of RM out with drawings of both the L1 and A5 to check....
  6. James Harrison
    Well, as I have a fair few projects on the go and at planning stage, I thought I'd start a blog to detail them rather than clog up the boards with thread after thread.
     
    What can we expect from reading this? As the blog name suggests, my primary area of interest is the Great Central Mainline and the Metropolitan Line, with the eventual goal of building a model based upon the joint route (at the moment I'm toying with a model of Marylebone, albeit a 'might have been' variant with Metropolitan joint working). And the scale/gauge combination I work in is 4mm scale, 16.5mm gauge.
     
    The era I model is early LNER- roughly 1925 to 1930. This allows me not only to run my GC-liveried Butler Henderson alongside LNER-liveried locos, but also allows a variety of liveries for the latter. Most of the locos I have built or adapted myself run in pre-1928 colours, whilst of course RTR examples mostly appear in early 1930s garb. So eventually the planned layout will be set during the changeover period of 1928-30- Directors both in LNER green and LNER black, some locos with numbers on the tender and others with numbers on the cabside and so on and so forth.
     
    Quite a lot of my work in the past has been fairly rough and ready; I've spent the last six months or more revisiting my older projects and either updating them or scrapping them outright and replacing them with better ones (the J11s I completed recently being an example of such a project). With each model I steadily improve and I'm now starting to get results I can be proud of.
     
    Some of the projects here will be kitbuilds, others hack-bashes of RTR stock. I found out early on that scratchbuilding at the moment is at the very limits of what I can do.... little steps are the key.
     
    So here is my envisaged programme of builds for the remainder of 2013:
     
    - LNER L1/L3 2-6-4. This will be a Dean Sidings resin kit running on a Triang jinty chassis. It is next in line for my loco projects.
    - LNER B4 'Immingham' class 4-6-0. This will be a hack-bash of an old Triang B12, with valvegear from a Bachmann O4.
    - LNER B5 'Fish' class 4-6-0. Again, like the 'Immingham', a hack-bash of a B12. In this instance the more modern Hornby offering.
    - LNER A1 'Centenary' 4-6-2. This will be a conversion of a Hornby Railroad 'Flying Scotsman'- it needs a GNR coal rail tender.
    - Rake of 1911 GCR corridor stock. These will be conversions of ex-Mainline LMS 57' stock. One of the four carriages is already completed.
    - GCR clerestory/ three arc suburban stock. I have seven Hornby clerestory carriages for these conversions.
    - GCR 6-wheel brakevan. I'll be hacking up a Hornby LMS brakevan and placing it on the chassis of a Hornby 6-wheel milk tanker.
     
    Of course, as I'm building these other projects come to mind (and some even get bought and put away for a while....) so I'm formulating the 2014 planned build programme too. At present this stands at:
     
    - LNER D9 4-4-0. A Triang 2P that will be hack-bashed.
    - LNER J10. I'm looking into the possibility of converting a Hornby Dean Goods into a J10.
    - LNER J13. I'm looking at turning a Hornby Jinty into a J13.
    - Metropolitan E class 0-4-4. A hack-bash from a Triang M7.
    - Metropolitan G class 0-6-4. A conversion of a Dean Sidings Barry Railway L-class tank engine.
    - Metropolitan Bo-Bo. A Radleys resin kit.
    - Metropolitan covered van. A Radleys resin kit (already under construction).
     
    The project I am about to start is a conversion of a Mainline LMS brake composite into a reasonable likeness of a GCR corridor brake third. This should be fun!
  7. James Harrison
    And then there were... two? Two and a half?
     

     
    The original pair that I bought from the Severn Valley are now finished; the all-third only required an interior and a repaint, and so was a quicker job than the brake third. The roof for it is a plastic moulding, I'm tempted to say it's from Coopercraft?- if so, that's a shame. I rather like it and would have bought some more to match the rest of the rake, but err.... well we know their reputation don't we, and that's all I'm going to say on the matter.
     
    So, that pair done, and then off on my own to build a matching pair.
     

     
    I did consider a cut and shut job on the brake end, but ultimately decided that I'd be hardpressed to get a decent finish, so I left it as it is. Most of the work with this carriage is going to be on the roof. I did buy a pair of aluminium roofs, but they're a bit too wide for these carriages. I've put them back into my spares box for use on another project (maybe I've found the roofs for my next pair of Barnums....)
     
    So the roof for this one- and the composite that will follow it- I've reused the existing clerestory roof, but I bulked it out with some balsa wood. I then carved the balsa wood down into an arced profile, which was surprisingly much easier than I thought it would be, and to get a nice smooth surface I covered it with paper. So my next job now is to fit the rain strips and the ventilators.
  8. James Harrison
    I repainted the roof and then refitted both it and the bogies. You inevitably get gaps between the roof and the body; as an experiment this time (this was after the photogrpah was taken) I tried glue 'n' glaze as a filler, reasoning that as it can be applied quite accurately it might make for less of a cleanup job afterward. I think it works!
     
    Then the solebars were repainted...
     
    I think all that is left to do now is to fit the transfers and varnish it.
  9. James Harrison
    The list of things that I'd like to change on the pair of carriages I bought is, actually, quite short.
     
    1. Fit Kadee couplings.
    2. Fit interiors.
    3. Clean up the cut and shut job on the brake third.
     
    So I started with the brake third, cleaned up the hacked up brake end easily enough with filler and solvent but of coursethis ruined the paint work which I had to do over again. Two coats of matt yellow and two coats of satin brown later....
     

     
    Oops, no, that's just after the yellow.
     
    Anyhow, as I was saying. Two coats of yellow, two coats of brown, then I fitted some new glazing and built an interior from scraps of plastic sheet and balsa wood.
     

     
    As you can see the roof for this carriage is a solid block of wood. I'm happy keeping that as it seems to have been quite nicely done, but at the carriage ends eventually I'll be making use of the filler again and masking the joint between body and roof. Which means localised re-repair of the teak....
     
    Before I can fit the roof, you might notice I've added a few strips of plastic sheet down either side of it to mask out any gaps between body and roofline. That needs painting.
     
    The nice thing is though, it's actually quite close to completion.
  10. James Harrison
    Well, I'd finally finished my rake of Metropolitan Ashbury carriages. I'm not entirely happy with how they've turned out, but they'll do. Until I find something more appropriate. I found something more appropriate a lot quicker than I was expecting though!
     
    Pretty much everybody, I guess, has a pile of bits and pieces that may come in useful someday. In my own pile are about seven or eight Hornby clerestories. Some have been used as donor vehicles for GCR carriages, some have been scrapped and reduced to bogies and underframes, and one or two are sitting in as-made condition waiting for me to decide what I want to do with them.
     
    About two months ago I visited the Severn Valley with a friend and in one of the bric-a-brac carriage fund shops in Bewdley I came across another pair of the clerestory carriages. Except that this pair had lost their roofs and been given arc roofs instead. The brake third had also had it's bodywork cut and shut- it was quite plain that somebody had made a decent attempt at turning them into GCR-style arc roof stock. I think I got them for a few pounds each....
     
    On returning home I went through my own bits and bobs pile and I find I've got a pair of Hornby clerestories, a composite and a brake third, complete and unsullied. Not for long! I've bought a pair of carriage roof mouldings from Dart Castings- I am sure you can see where this is going....
     
    1. The already-converted pair. Clean them up, new interiors, new couplings.
    2. Convert my pair of clerestories to match.
    3. Salvage what parts are useful from the Ashbury stock and scrap the remainder.
     
    Now the Ashbury stock, I reckon the couplings, the bogies and the buffers will be salvaged. That gives me four sets of 5' bogies that I can use for something else- and it strikes me I have a GWR Siphon tucked away somewhere with a view to conversion to another GCR bogie fish van.
     
    And when all this is done, I might just get around to some more silhouette cutter work on my clerestory and Barnum rakes....
  11. James Harrison
    Well, there was going to be a photo here, but it came out so dark that I think I'll attempt it again later....
     
    Anyway, I've been busy.
     
    Solebars are now fitted (3mm x 2mm plastic I-beam, sanded smooth on one side), and I've started the roof. 20 thou plastic sub-base, then the silhouette-cut roof formers, then some very thin strips of balsa wood on top. Now all it needs is the covering, which is going to be a paper laminate.
     
    And once the roof is done, all that's left really are the bifferbeams, couplings and underframe detailing.
  12. James Harrison
    Well, I got going. And I got stuck. What happened, quite simply, was this. I imported the drawings into Silhouette Studio, then I set up the parameters for the material (size of sheet etc) and, without my noticing or even asking for it, the Studio software took it upon itself to rescale the drawings to suit.
     
    Frankly this is a deplorable thing for the software to do and especially so if the re-scaling is so slight as to not be immediately noticeable. I ended up with a pair of sides of around 1/100 scale and a pair of bogies at about the same. (I actually built one of the bogies before I realised)....
     
    So I've had to re-cut the sides at least. The bogies, whilst building them I came to the conclusion that they're probably beyond me, every layer that I fitted just seemed to be adding more tension into them and I can't imagine that I'd end up with something I could actually use. So I compromised; I had a spare set of Gresley bogies in my spares box and I'll be using those instead, suitably doctored. I've ordered in a couple more pairs too so the intended rake of four Barnums will run on a standardised set of running gear.
     
    Moral of this? Measure, measure, measure and re-measure and then measure some more before you cut.
     
    Anyway, hopefully now that is sorted out.... my plans for today basically run to re-building the sides and, if I have time after that, cutting the seating and the carriage ends and vestibules.
  13. James Harrison
    Progress on the little saddletank. This week I have been fabricating some new 'cheeks', I suppose you could call them, running down from the saddle tank to the running plate. I can't model the boiler as such as the motor and chassis get in the way. Speaking of the chassis, the original one I found had pizza-cutter wheels with very deep flanges that couldn't run on my Code 75 track without bumping along the sleepers. Fortunately I had an identical chassis of a slightly more recent vintage (and whose wheels were slightly more suitable)- it's a plug in replacement. A rare easy victory there.
     
    I've also been looking at the splashers, and I've cut the bunker down. I still need to look at the running plate, I still need to create new cab sheets and there are details and heavy work alike aplenty to go before this gets anywhere near completion. But we're getting there.
  14. James Harrison
    It's been a month since I last posted in my blog..... things have been getting done but nothing really worth talking about.
     
    I've built the third of a set of four cardboard kits for Metropolitan Ashbury carriages. This one is the all-first. Truth be told it fought me all the way and I'm not entirely satisfied with it. It looks okay from a distance of about 3', which is the baseline test for my models, so it won't be destined for the Shelf of Appalling Mistakes or the dustbin.
     
    I then moved on and repainted a pair of LNER vans from Bachmann. This now gives me a rake of five GCR-ish vans. I was going to buy some more but at nearly £20 a throw versus £10 for the Parkside kit well.... I ended up with a pair of Parkside kits instead. These I am altering slightly by leaving the vacuum cylinders off- for some reason the kits have vacuum cylinders but not the pipes- with the eventualy intention of having two rakes of vans, one vac-fitted and one unfitted. I have been reading my book of ex-GCR wagons and the general gist seems to be that only stock for perishables traffic such as fish would have been vac-fitted. So, for the present I am working toward a 1:3 ratio in my goods stock of fitted to unfitted stock.
  15. James Harrison
    Suddenly there were three of them!
     
    I have completed an all first and a brake composite.
     

     

     
    The all third is structurally complete and just needs final painting, transfers and varnish.
     
    Moving on to the second brake composite...
     

     

     
    The underframes and the two sides cut down to length and Hornby Gresley ends fitted.
     

     
    The original bogies and their connecting rivets were sawn off, then holes frilled through the floor to allow the body to be lowered a few millimetres.
     

     
    Bachmann Gresley bogies were then screwed into placeand Kadee couplers fitted. Next steps now with this final member of the rake will be to block out the extraneous doors and windows, file down the beading in a few places and then into primer and teak.
  16. James Harrison
    Right, sitrep.
     

     

     
    The first of the rake, a six-compartment all-first, is finished. My usual varnishing/ sealing method of diluted PVA seems to have gone on a little blotchy; second coat needed to finish I think- though it shows worse in photographs than it does in the flesh. In any case, I am very happy with how this first carriage has turned out- far, far better than my attempts at 1898 stock, which I think are now destined for the breakers' yard.
     
    The second in the rake is going to a five-compartment brake composite; progress so far has seen the bodywork basically finished and glazed and the interior bulkheads and false ceiling done. The plan for today's modelling session is to crack on with the seating. The photographs I am working from show one of the corridor side windows blanked out- I can't tell however whether this is paint on the inside of the window or a blind which has been drawn. I'm erring toward the latter as- well, why go to the expense of putting in a large picture window just to paint it out?
     
    The third in the rake is a seven-compartment all-third. Again the bodywork is more or less done but the interior has not yet been started.
     
    A word on the interiors; I'm only building a suggestive interior consisting of compartments, seats and (where applicable) the corridor. With this rake I'm trying to use some spare Ian Kirk sides I bought a few years ago (it gets them out of my spares box and saves me using more plastic sheet, not that I'm running out of the stuff).
     
    Quite unexpectedly this is now going to become a four-carriage rake rather than a three!- through the good offices of Londontram I have sourced another brake carriage. I am currently debating whether this will eventually become a second five-compartment brake compo or a four-compartment brake. I have the photographs for the former and a drawing for the latter.
  17. James Harrison
    Last time I discussed how progress on all three of these carriages was slowing down to almost a snails pace, mostly because of the tedious nature of some of the work and trying to get it over and done with for three carriages in one go really wasn't working out for me. So to see at least a little meaningful progress I decided to take the most advanced of the carriages and just concentrate on it, to get at least one of the models finished and hopefully provide a little encouragement to see the other two done.
     
    Well...
     

     

     
    I'm now in the situation of having the all first structurally complete and painted, and just awaiting transfers and varnish.
     
    I think it is right to say that the Triang Caley coaches lend themselves better to being converted into the 1904 type GCR carriages than they do the original 1898 stock; the sides need less in the way of cutting up and rearranging and the roof is of about the right profile. With hindsight, I should have left the 1898 carriages well alone and gone for a set of the 1904 variety. I would then have had four of these to play with rather than three! Oh well, we live and learn.
     
    Now to get on with the other pair.
  18. James Harrison
    Into teak!
     

     
    Well, starting to. This is just the undercoat.
     

     
    Aah, yes, that's better.
     
    Two carriages are now in the latter condition just leaving the one in the state shown in the first picture.
     

     
    Perhaps the most awkward process so far has been the construction of new underframe trussing. Lots of little bits of 0.5mm plastic strip and one wrong move puts the whole lot askew and having to be rebuilt. It's fragile of course but it has a surprising amount of 'give' in it so in normal use I don't see any real problems arising.
     

     
    All of the above of course was done after a lot of hard work to reduce ride height. This was done by removing the original bogies and the securing brass rivets, then by cutting away the bolster and then by cutting away the floor around the bolster. New bogies were sourced from Bachmann, secured using nuts and bolts and then a new floor built.
  19. James Harrison
    I've been crawling along with a couple of carriages. One of the upsides of doing three models in one go is that you you get three models in the time it takes to do one, or so the theory goes. One of the downsides is that every process in fact takes three times as long.... you gain, you lose....
     
    Anyway, the task for the last few days has been to reduce the ride height of the carriages. The act of removing the original couplings pretty much destroyed the original bogies; no real issue because I was planning to replace them anyway. So; original bogies removed, then finding that the reason they rode so high was the massive bolster above the bogie. That also had to be removed, and then a large brass rivet removed..... all of that done you might be forgiven for thinking the rebuild process can begin but you'd be wrong!- putting the new bogies into position the wheels now catch on the underside of the floor. Drill out large holes in the floor, and extend them out as far as possible so that the bogies can actually turn. Then new bolsters have to be built, then the bogies fitted (bolts, washers and nuts for this) and then- result! It works!
     
    But then the bogies have to come off again so I can fit new couplings. And once that is done, and the bogies refitted, then, and only then, can I start thinking about a new floor.
     
    But they're done now. At least, two of them are. The third is not too far behind.
     

     

     

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