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). A footnote in the text cites the data to "Collis Huntington Memoir, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley."

December births December 17 - Frederick W. Lander, Chief Civil Engineer for the Pacific Railroad (d. 1862). References