In the crisp autumn of 1959, a train carrying 47 passengers vanished without a trace along a remote stretch of track in the rugged hills of West Virginia, slipping into oblivion as if the earth itself had swallowed it whole.

For decades, the mystery haunted the region, a whispered tale of lives snuffed out in an instant, leaving families to grapple with unanswered questions and a silence that grew heavier with each passing year.

The train, a creaky old passenger car bound for Charleston, had been a familiar sight, its whistle echoing through the hollows as it chugged along the winding route.

On that fateful October evening, the passengers, miners in worn coats, housewives clutching bags, a young couple on their honeymoon, boarded with the routine trust of those who’d ridden the line a 100 times before.

The conductor, a grizzled man named Harold Grayson, checked his watch at 6:47 p.m. as the train pulled out of the last known station, its lights flickering against the gathering dusk.

No one could have predicted that this would be the last anyone would see of them alive.

The first sign of trouble came not from the passengers, but from the silence that followed.

The train was due in Charleston by 9:15 p.m.

A journey of just over 2 hours through the dense Appalachian wilderness.

When it didn’t arrive, the station master raised the alarm, his voice crackling over the radio with a growing edge of panic.

Search parties were dispatched at dawn, their boots crunching through fallen leaves as they scoured the tracks, expecting a derailment or a mechanical failure.

But the rails stretched on, unbroken and eerily empty.

the gravel beside them undisturbed.

The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth.

Yet there was no scent of smoke, no splintered wood, no cry for help.

It was as if the train had dissolved into the night.

Families gathered at the station, their faces etched with fear, clutching photographs of loved ones.

Elellanar Hayes, a school teacher with a warm smile.

Tommy Riggs, a 12-year-old boy traveling to visit his grandparents.

Margaret Dunn, a nurse with dreams of a better life.

The absence of any wreckage fueled wild speculation.

Had the train been hijacked? Had it plunged into a hidden ravine? The lack of answers gnawed at the community, a wound that refused to heal.

As days turned to weeks, the investigation deepened, led by a young railroad detective named Clarence Hol.

Hol was a methodical man.

His desk cluttered with maps and timets, his mind racing to piece together the impossible.

He interviewed the station staff, poured over maintenance logs, and even consulted old-timers who swore the hills were cursed.

The train’s last radio transmission, a garbled message at 7:03 p.m. , reporting unusual vibrations, offered the only clue, but it was maddeningly vague.

The search expanded, helicopters buzzing overhead, their spotlights cutting through the fog, while ground crews hacked through thicket and scaled cliffs.

Yet the wilderness yielded nothing.

No tracks, no debris, no sign of the 47 souls who had vanished.

Holt’s frustration mounted as he stared at the photograph of the train.

Its sepia tones a stark contrast to the modern steel engines of the 1950s.

The passengers faces captured in a group shot taken just before departure stared back at him.

Ordinary people caught in an extraordinary fate.

The case grew cold, filed away as one of the great unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.

But the families never stopped waiting.

Their hope a fragile thread in the face of overwhelming despair.

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Years rolled by, the 1960s giving way to the 70s and 80s, and the vanished train became a legend, a ghost story told around campfires.

Children dared each other to walk the old tracks at night, their laughter mingling with the wind that whispered through the trees.

Hol, now gay-haired and retired, kept a scrapbook of clippings.

His obsession undimemed by time, he’d revisit the site annually, his boots leaving fresh prints in the dirt, his eyes scanning the horizon for something, anything that might explain the disappearance.

The railroad company, under pressure from grieving families, commissioned surveys and seismic studies, but the results were inconclusive.

The Hills hiding their secrets with stubborn resolve.

Rumors swirled.

Some said the train had been sucked into a sinkhole.

Others claimed it was the work of a shadowy government experiment.

The lack of evidence only fueled the myths, turning the passengers into spectral figures in the collective imagination.

Eleanor’s sister, Ruth, wrote letters to newspapers, her handwriting shaky with age, pleading for someone to care.

Tommy’s grandparents placed a memorial stone by the tracks, its inscription weathered but legible, lost but not forgotten.

The pain lingered.

A silent scream in the hearts of those left behind.

Then, in the spring of 1996, a breakthrough came from an unlikely source.

A team of geologists mapping the region for a mining project stumbled upon an anomaly.

A collapsed tunnel buried beneath a thick layer of earth and rock.

The discovery was accidental, the result of a ground penetrating radar sweep that revealed a hollow space where none should have been.

The crew, led by Dr.Maryanne Kesler, a nononsense woman with a PhD in Earth sciences, descended into the site with ropes and headlamps, their breaths visible in the cool, damp air.

What they found stopped them cold.

the rusted hulk of a train car, its doors jammed shut, its windows caked with decades of grime.

The number 45 was faintly visible on the side, matching the last known car of the missing train.

Kesler’s heart pounded as she radioed her team, her voice trembling with a mix of awe and dread.

The tunnel, a forgotten spurline abandoned in the 1930s, had caved in, sealing the car in a tomb of stone and soil.

The implications were staggering.

Could the passengers still be inside? The site was cordoned off and investigators were called in.

Their arrival marked by the whale of sirens cutting through the quiet hills.

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The excavation began with painstaking care.

Archaeologists and forensic experts joining the effort to unearth the buried car.

The tunnel’s entrance was a jagged m, its walls lined with crumbling timber and twisted cables, a relic of a bygone era.

Heavy machinery peeled back layers of earth, revealing the car’s skeletal frame inch by inch.

The air inside was stale, thick with the musty scent of decay and metal.

As the doors were pried open, the team braced for the worst, their flashlights casting long shadows across the interior.

What they found was a scene frozen in time, seats overturned, luggage scattered, a child’s shoe lying abandoned in the aisle.

The passengers were gone, their bodies absent, leaving behind only traces of their final moments.

A woman’s hat rested on a seat, its veil torn.

A man’s pocket watch, its hands stopped at 7:05 p.m. , glinted in the light.

The evidence suggested a sudden collapse.

the tunnel caving in with a force that might have buried the car deep underground.

But where were the people? Theories emerged.

Had they escaped before the collapse? Had they been trapped and later removed? The mystery deepened, each discovery raising more questions than answers.

Hol, now in his 70s, was summoned to the site.

His eyes misty as he recognized the car from his old files.

The weight of 37 years pressed down on him.

A burden shared by the families who had waited so long for closure.

The discovery of the buried train car sent shock waves through the investigative team, reigniting a case that had lain dormant for nearly four decades.

The site buzzed with activity as forensic specialists clad in white suits combed through the wreckage, their movements methodical yet tinged with urgency.

The tunnel, a claustrophobic labyrinth of stone and steel, stretched into darkness, its walls scarred by the violent collapse that had entombmed the car.

Dr.Kesler’s team mapped the structure.

Their lasers cutting through the gloom to reveal the extent of the cave-in.

The car, identified as car 45, was a time capsule.

Its interior, a chaotic tableau of overturned seats, shattered glass, and personal belongings frozen in the moment of disaster.

A suitcase spilled open, revealing a faded dress and a letter addressed to my dearest Margaret.

A heartbreaking link to nurse Margaret Dunn, one of the missing passengers.

The absence of bodies puzzled everyone.

The car was intact enough to have preserved remains, yet the seats were empty, the floor bare of bones.

This anomaly fueled a relentless drive to uncover the truth.

A truth that seemed to slip further away with each new finding.

Investigators turned to the tunnel’s history, digging through dusty archives in Charleston’s railroad office.

The spur line, built in the 1920s to service a coal mine, had been abandoned after a partial collapse in 1935.

Its entrance sealed and forgotten.

Old blueprints showed a network of shafts and chambers, some marked as unstable, others uncharted.

Could the train have veered onto this disused track by mistake? The unusual vibrations reported in the final radio transmission hinted at a derailment, perhaps caused by a shift in the unstable ground.

Hol, leaning on a cane now, poured over the maps with Kesler, his fingers tracing the lines where the main track diverged into the spur.

The theory took shape.

The train, perhaps due to a mechanical failure or human error, had taken the wrong turn, plunging into the tunnel just as the earth gave way.

But why no bodies? The question haunted Hol, his sleepless nights filled with the faces of the 47 passengers he’d failed to find.

The families, too, felt the weight, their hope rekindled, only to be met with more uncertainty.

The excavation intensified.

crews working around the clock under flood lights that cast stark shadows across the tunnel.

Deeper within, they uncovered a second chamber, its entrance blocked by a fallen beam.

With hydraulic jacks and careful precision, they cleared the debris, revealing a scene that chilled even the seasoned archaeologists.

The chamber held remnants of a makeshift camp, blankets tattered by time, a rusted lantern, a pile of coal that suggested someone had tried to stay warm.

Footprints preserved in the dust led toward a narrow shaft at the back, its opening barely wide enough for a person to crawl through.

The implication was staggering.

Some passengers might have survived the initial collapse, clawing their way out of the car to seek refuge.

Forensic analysis of the blankets revealed traces of human hair and skin cells, too degraded for DNA, but enough to suggest occupancy.

The shaft, when explored with remote cameras, descended into a labyrinth of natural caves, its depths uncharted and treacherous.

The team theorized that the survivors, disoriented and injured, had ventured into the caves, hoping to find an exit.

But the lack of further evidence, no skeletons, no tools, left the outcome uncertain, a ghost story etched in stone.

Holt’s mind raced as he stood at the chamber’s edge.

the damp air heavy with the past.

He remembered Elellanar Hayes, the school teacher who’d planned to start a new school year, and Tommy Riggs, the boy whose laughter had filled the train.

Had they made it this far? The cave system, part of a larger network beneath the Appalachians, was a death trap.

Narrow passages, sudden drops, and pockets of methane gas that could suffocate the unwary.

Rescue teams equipped with gas detectors and climbing gear began mapping the caves.

Their progress slow and perilous.

They found signs of human passage.

A scratched initial M on a rock wall.

A fragment of cloth snagged on a stelactite.

Each discovery was a thread in a tapestry of survival and despair.

Yet the threads led nowhere.

The cave seemed to swallow the evidence as effectively as the tunnel had the train.

Holt’s health faltered under the strain, his cough echoing in the hollow spaces, but he refused to leave, driven by a need to give the family something, anything, to hold on to.

The investigation took a darker turn as rumors surfaced of a coverup.

Old railroad workers, interviewed by a local journalist, spoke of hushed meetings in the 1950s, of orders to seal the spur line and forget the incident.

A retired engineer claimed he’d been paid to falsify maintenance records, suggesting the track’s condition had been known, but ignored to cut costs.

The theory gained traction.

The railroad, fearing liability, might have sent a crew to remove the bodies after the collapse, burying the evidence to protect its reputation.

Investigators subpoenaed company records, uncovering a payment ledger from 1960 that listed an emergency cleanup near the site.

The amount was substantial, enough to hire a discrete team.

Halt, now bedridden but still sharp, pieced together the timeline.

If the bodies were removed, they could have been interred in an unmarked grave or dumped into the cave’s depths.

The cave mapping team redoubled their efforts, lowering microphones into the shafts to detect hollow spaces.

A faint echo returned, hinting at a larger chamber below.

The possibility of finding a mass grave loomed, a grim resolution to a decad’s old enigma.

The families gathered at the sight’s perimeter clung to each other, their tears mingling with the rain that began to fall, a somber reququum for the lost.

The faint echo from the cave’s depths spurred a renewed sense of urgency.

The investigative team pushing deeper into the uncharted labyrinth beneath West Virginia’s hills.

The rain outside turned the tunnel entrance into a muddy slle, but inside the air grew colder.

The silence broken only by the drip of water and the hum of equipment.

The cave mapping team, led by a wiry spelunker named Daniel Pierce, descended into the shaft with ropes and thermal imaging cameras, their headlamps casting eerie beams across the jagged walls.

The chamber below, revealed by the echo, was a vast vault-like space.

Its floor littered with broken stelactites and a scattering of bones, human bones.

The discovery sent a jolt through the team, their breaths catching as they realized they might have found the final resting place of the vanished passengers.

Pierce’s hands trembled as he bagged the first skull, its empty socket staring into the void, a silent testament to a tragedy buried for decades.

Forensic experts swarmed the chamber, their sterile tools contrasting with the raw primal setting.

The bones, though fragmented, suggested multiple individuals, their arrangement hinting at a hurried burial.

A rusted shovel, its handle splintered, lay nearby, corroborating the coverup theory.

Someone had been here, likely the railroads cleanup crew, disposing of the evidence.

Analysis revealed fractures consistent with a cave-in, supporting the idea that the passengers had survived the initial collapse only to succumb to injuries or starvation in the dark.

A child’s rib, small and delicate, brought tears to Holt’s eyes as he watched via a live feed from his hospital bed.

His voice weak but resolute over the phone.

Keep going.

The families huddled under tents at the site clung to every update, their hope now tinged with dread.

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The investigation shifted to identifying the remains, a task complicated by the passage of time.

DNA samples were extracted, sent to labs across the country for comparison with family records.

The process was agonizingly slow.

Each match a bittersweet victory.

Margaret Dunn’s identity was confirmed first.

Her nurse’s badge found tangled in the debris.

Its enamel chipped but legible.

Ellaner Hayes followed.

Her locket containing a faded photo of her students providing closure to her sister Ruth, now frail and bedridden herself.

The tally grew.

37 passengers identified so far, leaving 10 unaccounted for, including Tommy Riggs.

The cave’s depths held more secrets, and Pice’s team pressed on, navigating a narrow passage that opened into a second chamber.

Here they found a pile of clothing, rotted but recognizable, overalls, a woman’s coat, a boy’s cap, suggesting the survivors had shed layers in a feudal bid for warmth.

The railroad’s role came under scrutiny as leaked documents revealed a 1960 memo ordering disposal of remains to avoid a scandal.

A former executive tracked down in a nursing home confessed under pressure, his voice shaking as he admitted to authorizing the cleanup.

The revelation fueled public outrage.

Protests erupting outside railroad offices demanding justice for the forgotten.

Hol, nearing his end, urged the team to find Tommy.

His last wish to give the boy’s grandparents peace.

The cave’s final chamber yielded a small skeleton, its size matching a 12-year-old, a toy train clutched in its bony fingers.

The find broke the team, their silence heavy with grief.

DNA would confirm it, but the cap nearby, monogrammed with TR, left little doubt.

The confirmation of Tommy Rig’s identity sent a ripple of sorrow through the investigative team and the families gathered at the tunnel’s edge.

The toy train clutched in his skeletal hand, a poignant symbol of a life cut short.

The rain had stopped, leaving the air heavy with the scent of wet earth and the faint metallic tang of rust from the buried car.

Daniel Pierce, his face etched with exhaustion, carefully bagged the remains, his hands steady despite the emotional weight.

The second chamber’s discovery marked a turning point.

The cave no longer just a tomb, but a chronicle of survival and despair.

Forensic teams worked tirelessly, their headlamps illuminating the scattered relics.

Coins from 1959, a man’s wallet with a faded photo of a smiling family.

a woman’s hair pin tangled in the dirt.

Each item was a thread connecting the past to the present, a lifeline for the families who had waited 37 years for answers.

The railroads culpability loomed larger.

The confessed executives testimony fueling a firestorm of legal action as lawyers prepared lawsuits against the company for negligence and cover up.

The cave’s exploration continued, the team navigating a treacherous descent into a third chamber.

its entrance a narrow crevice barely visible in the flickering light.

The passage was a gauntlet of sharp rocks and sudden drops requiring harnesses and sheer determination.

Inside they found a makeshift shelter, a lean too of broken timber and blankets, suggesting the passengers had organized in the aftermath of the collapse.

A charred fire pit held the remains of coal and wood, its ashes cold, but telling of desperate attempts to stay alive.

Nearby, a notebook, its pages soden but legible, bore scribbled entries in a shaky hand.

Oct 10, still here, hope fading, followed by dates stretching into November.

The writer, likely Harold Grayson, the conductor, had chronicled their plight, his final entry on November 3rd, ending mid-sentence.

No food, no.

The abrupt stop hinted at a sudden end.

perhaps starvation or a secondary collapse.

The team’s heart sank, the realization dawning that these people had fought to survive, only to be betrayed by the Earth and the railroads silence.

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The notebook’s discovery spurred a deeper forensic analysis.

Experts using infrared to uncover faded ink that revealed more details.

Grayson had noted a plan to dig toward the surface, his entries mentioning a weak spot in the cave wall.

The team targeted this area, their drills chipping away at the rock until a hollow sound echoed back.

With careful excavation, they breached a small cavity, finding a pile of debris and a single boot, its sole worn thin.

The cavity suggested an escape attempt.

The passengers perhaps tunneling toward fresh air before the effort failed.

Soil samples indicated a shift in the cave structure around that time, likely another collapse that sealed their fate.

The absence of additional remains in this chamber fueled speculation.

Had some escaped only to perish elsewhere, their bodies lost to the wilderness.

The team expanded the search, deploying drones with thermal sensors into the cave network, their worring blades a stark contrast to the stillness.

Back at the surface, the families faced a media circus.

Their grief exploited by cameras and microphones.

Ruth Hayes, Ellaner’s sister, spoke haltingly of her relief mixed with anguish.

Her voice breaking as she held the locket found in the cave.

The railroad issued a tepid apology, its PR team scrambling to mitigate damage.

But the public’s anger grew, protests swelling with signs reading, “Justice for the 47.

” Hol, now too frail to visit, listened via radio, his raspy voice urging the team onward.

Find them all.

The drones detected a thermal anomaly deeper in the caves.

A faint heat signature suggesting a pocket of trapped air or perhaps organic material.

The team prepared for another descent.

Their hope tempered by the knowledge that each chamber might hold more heartbreak.

The cave was a Pandora’s box.

Each revelation a mix of closure and new questions.

The anomaly led to a fourth chamber.

Its entrance a jagged wound in the rock.

Inside the team found a cluster of skeletons.

Their position suggesting a huddled group.

Perhaps the last survivors clinging together in the dark.

A woman’s ring engraved with eh confirmed Ellaner’s presence.

Her body finally at rest.

The chamber’s air was thick with methane, explaining the lack of decay and the possibility that the group had succumbed to gas poisoning.

A man’s jacket, its pocket holding a crumpled map of the spur line, hinted at a final feudal attempt to navigate.

The map’s markings showed a route toward an old minehaft, now collapsed, suggesting some had tried to reach it before the end.

The team’s spirits flagged, the cave’s relentless revelations wearing them down.

Yet they pressed on, driven by the family’s silent please.

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The discovery of Eleanor Hayes’s ring and the huddled skeletons in the fourth chamber cast a somber Paul over the investigative team.

The weight of 37 years of loss pressing down as they documented the grim scene.

The methane laden air hung heavy, its faint tang a reminder of the invisible killer that might have claimed the final survivors.

Daniel Pierce, his hands now steady from years of practice, carefully bagged the remains, each skeleton a story of endurance cut short.

The man’s jacket, its map crumpled and torn, was spread out under a portable light, revealing a handdrawn path marked with shaky lines toward the old mineshaft.

The markings were desperate, a lastditch effort to find an exit.

But the collapsed shaft on the map told a different tale, one of hope extinguished by tons of rock.

The team’s drones, still humming in the background, captured the chamber’s layout, their footage showing a narrow tunnel branching off, its end lost in shadow.

The possibility of more survivors lingered.

a faint pulse in the cave’s oppressive silence, driving the team to push deeper despite their exhaustion.

Forensic experts converged on the chamber, their tools buzzing as they collected samples from the skeletons in the environment.

The ring engraved with eh was a match for Elellanar’s family heirloom, its gold dulled but intact, a poignant link to the school teacher who had dreamed of shaping young minds.

The methane levels measured at lethal concentrations suggested the group had been overcome quickly.

Their huddled formation a testament to their final moments of comfort.

A child’s bracelet, its clasp broken, lay near one skeleton, its size suggesting it might have belonged to Tommy Riggs, though DNA would confirm it.

The team spirits lifted briefly with this find.

A glimmer of closure for the boy’s grandparents who had waited decades by the memorial stone.

Yet the absence of the remaining 10 passengers nawed at them.

The cave’s depths holding secrets yet to be unearthed.

Holt’s voice crackled over the radio, weak but insistent.

Keep looking.

They’re still out there.

His words fueled their resolve.

A dying man’s plea echoing in the hollow spaces.

The narrow tunnel beckoned, its entrance a tight squeeze that required the team to shed gear and crawl on their bellies.

The passage twisted downward, the walls closing in, the air growing thicker with each meter.

Pierce led the way, his headlamp flickering as it caught glints of quartz embedded in the rock.

After what felt like an eternity, the tunnel opened into a fifth chamber.

Its ceiling low and its floor a chaotic jumble of boulders and debris.

The team’s lights revealed a startling sight.

A second train car, smaller and older than car 45.

Its frame crushed but recognizable.

The number 12 was stencled on its side, a detail that sent a chill through Pierce.

Records showed a maintenance car, car 12, had been attached to the 1959 train for repairs.

The car’s presence suggested the derailment had involved more than one vehicle.

Its collapse perhaps triggering the tunnel’s demise.

Inside, they found a cache of tools, wrenches, a hammer, a pry bar scattered as if dropped in a hurry, hinting that crew members had tried to free the passengers or themselves.

The chamber held more than just the car.

A pile of bones, less fragmented than those in the fourth chamber, lay near a natural spring.

its water still trickling faintly.

The bone suggested a group that had lasted longer, perhaps sustained by the spring before the methane or a final collapse took them.

A leather satchel, its contents preserved by the damp, yielded a log book, its pages brittle but legible.

The entries, written in a hurried scrawl, chronicled the crews efforts post collapse.

Oct 11, car derailed, tunnel unstable.

Oct 13, passengers moved to chamber, water found.

Oct 20, gas rising, some gone.

The final entry, dated October 25th, read, “No hope sealing shaft to save air.

” The log book’s author, likely the train’s engineer, had sealed a side passage, a desperate act to prolong their lives.

The team found the sealed shaft, its rocks carefully stacked, and began to clear it, their tools clinking against stone in the quiet.

As they worked, a faint metallic glint caught Pice’s eye.

A railroad badge, its name plate reading J.

Larson, the engineer listed on the 1959 manifest.

The badge lay near a skeleton with a fractured skull, suggesting Larsson had died sealing the shaft, perhaps struck by falling rock.

The chamber’s air grew stifling, the methane detector beeping a warning, forcing the team to retreat momentarily.

Back at the surface, the log book was rushed to experts, its contents analyzed to reconstruct the timeline.

The crew had moved passengers to the fifth chamber, using car 12 as a temporary shelter.

But the rising gas and structural instability had sealed their fate.

The sealed shaft, when fully cleared, revealed a smaller cavity containing three more skeletons.

Their positions suggesting they had been the last to succumb, huddled near the spring.

Among them was a woman’s purse, its contents, including a locket with a photo of a young girl, possibly Margaret Dun, linking her to this final group.

The railroads cover up deepened with this find.

The log book’s mention of ceiling shaft to save air, implying the company knew survivors might have lingered.

A second ledger found in car 12’s wreckage listed payments to a cleanup crew in November 1959, corroborating the executive’s confession.

The crew, it seemed, had removed some bodies to hide the extent of the disaster, leaving others buried to avoid detection.

The families, now numbering fewer as time took its toll, gathered around a table to hear the updates, their faces a mix of relief and rage.

Ruth Hayes clutched Elellanar’s locket, her tears falling as she whispered, “She fought so hard.

” The team, driven by this emotional anchor, pushed to identify the remaining bones, their work a race against the cave’s deteriorating conditions.

The methane levels rose, the chamber’s stability waning, but they refused to stop.

Each skeleton a piece of the puzzle they owed to the families.

The cave’s revelations painted a picture of heroism amid horror.

Passengers and crew banding together, digging for survival, sealing passages to buy time.

Yet, the railroads betrayal cast a shadow.

Its actions ensuring the story remained buried until 1996.

The team’s final descent, armed with respirators and reinforced gear, aimed to map the cave’s full extent, seeking the last 10 missing.

A drone lowered into a newly discovered shaft detected a thermal signature.

Its heat suggesting a sealed pocket of air or perhaps a final chamber.

The possibility of more survivors or at least their remains hung in the balance of fragile hope in the cave’s relentless grip.

Hol listening from his hospital bed murmured his last request.

Bring them home.

His voice faded as the team prepared for the final push.

The cave story nearing its end, but its echoes resonating still.

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