1820 in rail transport

This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 1820.

• 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.^[1]
• 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.

• January 21 – Egide Walschaerts, Belgian inventor of a steam locomotive valve gear (d. 1901).^[2]

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

• May 2 - Robert Gerwig, German civil engineer, designer of Schwarzwald Railway and the Hell Valley Railway (d. 1885).^[3]

• July 31 – John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from 1858 (d. 1884).^[4]

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

• September 20 – Alfred Belpaire, Belgian inventor of the Belpaire firebox used on steam locomotives (d. 1893).^[2]

• December 21 – William H. Osborn, president of Illinois Central Railroad 1855–1865, president of Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans Railroad 1875–1882, is born (d. 1894).

• James Beatty, Irish engineer who was involved in building the European and North American Railway and the Grand Crimean Central Railway (d. 1856)

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (July 2010)

• White, John H Jr. (Spring 1986). "America's Most Noteworthy Railroaders". Railroad History. 154: 9–15.