MacDonald Stephenson

Sir Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (1808–1895), was a 19th-century British railway engineer instrumental in the establishment of the East India Railway in British India.

Son of Rowland Stephenson, of a long-established Cumberland family, he was born in London and educated at Harrow. He began work in his father's bank but its failure in 1828 (and his father's consequent exile in America) caused him to move into engineering, at first as London agent for the Gospel Oak Ironworks in Staffordshire. He applied himself to the study of railway engineering and became and Associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1836. In 1838 he became Secretary of "The Comprehensive Company for establishing Regular Steam Communication with India", which became the "Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company" in 1840. In 1843 he took his family to India, hoping not only to establish railways there, but all the way back to Europe. He was managing director of the East India Railway Company which started building a line from Calcutta in 1849, and he was knighted for this in October 1856.

He advocated an imperial railway to the Chinese government in 1859 and a Kowloon–Canton Railway to the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce in 1864; both proposals were rejected.

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