13 November — the Nikolaev Railway was put into operation. The October (Nikolaev, as it began to be called after the death of Emperor Nicholas I) Railway is the oldest in Russia. Its history began in 1837 with the opening of the Saint Petersburg–Tsarskoye Selo railway line. On 13 November 1851 the railway connected the two Russian capitals: at 11:15 a.m. a passenger train departed from St. Petersburg and arrived in Moscow the next day at 9:00 a.m.
The journey took 21 hours 45 minutes. The distance between St. Petersburg and Moscow is 598 versts (634 kilometers); the length of the railway was set at 604 versts (644 kilometers).
At that time it was the longest double-track railway in the world.
Initially, two passenger trains and four freight trains ran between St. Petersburg and Moscow. A passenger train consisted of 7 cars, a freight train of 15. The average speed was 29.6 km/h. Gradually, train speeds increased and travel time decreased.
26 March — a monument to Ivan Susanin was unveiled in Kostroma.
25 May — metallurgist Pavel Petrovich Anosov died; he gained worldwide fame for his work on steel production. He rediscovered the secret of making bulat steel, lost in the Middle Ages. He was born in 1799.
