Cryptic crossword No 1,553

Thanks Rough & welcome. I had to resort to quite a few "guess and check", some strategic letter reveals, and in the end some full reveals to get over the line. Favourites 9a, 14a, 27a (though wasn't familiar with alternative spelling), 1d (despite stretchy definition?) & 13d (needed some e-help). But several still evade parsing - do you have annotations you could share? There are some great ideas & excellent surfaces, which bodes well for future puzzles, but quite a few issues too - spoilers ...

I'm a fairly experienced solver, usually managing to complete the Grauniad cryptic and once or twice even managing Azed before I decided he irritated me too much. And this is the first puzzle I can remember encountering where I couldn't crack a single clue. Given the explanations, some of the clues are actually superb - I had ticks against 14a, 27a, 4d (except that as any railway buff will tell you, it's a city!), 6d, 15d, 16d and 20d; 23d and 24d were near-misses. However...(continues in reply)

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