This article lists events related to rail transport that occurred in 1827.

• February 28 – The Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road is incorporated.

• May 5 – Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway opened by the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company in the United States.

• June 30 - the Saint-Étienne to Andrézieux Railway, the first railway line in France and continental Europe begins to operate.

• September 7 – Opening of the first railway in Austria-Hungary, a horse-worked line from České Budějovice to Trojanov (in the present-day Czech Republic).^{[1][page needed]}

• December 19 – The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road is chartered.

• Claudius Crozet completes surveying a route for the first railroad to be built in Virginia, the Chesterfield Railroad.
• John B. Jervis becomes the chief engineer for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the forerunner of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.

• April 1 – Thomas Seavey Hall, American inventor of railroad signalling systems (d. 1880).

• July 11 – Austin Corbin, president of Long Island Rail Road (d. 1896).

• September 27 – Aaron Augustus Sargent, American journalist, lawyer and politician; authored the first Pacific Railroad Act (d. 1887).

• October 27 – Albert Fink, German-born American civil engineer and railroad manager (d. 1897).