Rennie finally responded to Raisbeck, informing him by way of mitigation that he had been employed on a project in Portsmouth and had not received his post. He agrees to provide Raisbeck with costings for a railway line, but cautions him that ‘as no survey was made for the express object of a Railway what I can say will be more of a guess than any thing else – as a railway would require to be made on a very different line from a Canal that guess will I trust have to be sufficient to enable the committee to form a tolerable correct opinion which of the solutions it will be most for their interest to adopt.’