Events
April event
- April 19 – Stockton and Darlington Railway is authorised by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
November event
- November – Henry Robinson Palmer patents a monorail system in England.
Births
May births
- May 8 – William Henry Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt and president of the New York Central system (d. 1885).
August births
- August 10 – Jay Cooke, financier who built the Northern Pacific Railway (d. 1905).
- August 17 – John Saxby, English railway signalling engineer (d. 1913).
October births
- October 21 - Collis P. Huntington, a member of The Big Four group of financiers in California (d. 1900).
December births
- December 17 - Frederick W. Lander, Chief Civil Engineer for the Pacific Railroad (d. 1862).