Transcribed from the March 1820 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org REPORT OF THE KNARESBROUGH RAIL-WAY COMMITTEE. TO THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN, Proprietors of Estates, ON THE ADOPTED LINE; TO THE SUBSCRIBERS FOR THE SURVEY, _AND TO AN ENLIGHTENED AND LIBERAL PUBLIC_, This Report OF THE KNARESBROUGH RAIL-WAY, (_Originally intended for a Canal_) IS WITH ALL DUE DEFERENCE AND REGARD PRESENTED BY THEIR FAITHFUL AND OBEDIENT SERVANTS, THE COMMITTEE. PREFACE. If the River Nidd and the brooks adjacent, in the vicinity of Knaresbro', up the valley to Ramsgill, near Pateley-Bridge, and near the adopted line, had not possessed the many water-falls, and given motion to the sixty-seven mills which they do;--or had the great landed proprietors, on the line now adopted been hostile to this all improving project, of this highly favoured and not less honoured, their native district;--or had the hand of Nature, when it varied the surface of our earth, no doubt for wise purposes, and formed those high hills, composed their bowels of any other substance than what it is;--or had the commercial necessities of Knaresbro' and its neighbourhood not existed, and the slow progress of their redemption, compared with others, at one time of far less note, not been too apparent; then, perhaps, this project, commendable as it is, would have shared the same fate, during a season of sickness, which it did twenty years ago.