Events

  • May 1 – The Kington Tramway, a horse-worked plateway, is opened from Eardisley to Kington, Herefordshire, England. Together with the Hay Railway it forms a continuous system 36 miles (45 km) in length, the longest in the United Kingdom at this date.
  • October - John Birkinshaw of Bedlington Ironworks patents improvements in the production of wrought iron rails.
  • Thomas Gray publishes his first of five editions of Observations on a General Iron Railway, a book that accelerates the British debate on this means of transportation and promotes the concept of a national rail network.
  • An early form of monorail in Russia is operated by Ivan Elmanov in Myachkovo, Moscow Oblast.

Births

January births

  • January 21 – Egide Walschaerts, Belgian inventor of a steam locomotive valve gear (d. 1901).

April births

  • April 8 - John Taylor Johnston, president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, 1848–1877 (d. 1893).

May births

  • May 2 - Robert Gerwig, German civil engineer, designer of Schwarzwald Railway and the Hell Valley Railway (d. 1885).

July births

  • July 31 – John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from 1858 (d. 1884).

August births

  • August 6 – Donald Smith, afterwards Lord Strathcona, Scottish financier, promoter of the Canadian Pacific Railway (d. 1914).

September births

  • September 20 – Alfred Belpaire, Belgian inventor of the Belpaire firebox used on steam locomotives (d. 1893).