John Urpeth Rastrick

John Urpeth Rastrick (1780–1856) was a British civil and locomotive engineer of considerable distinction who played a central role in the earliest years of practical steam railway development — as a builder of the first commercially successful locomotive in North America, as one of the three judges at the Rainhill Trials of 1829, and as a civil engineer responsible for significant sections of several important early British railways.

Born at Morpeth, Northumberland on 26 January 1780, Rastrick worked under John Hazledine at Bridgnorth before establishing the firm of Foster, Rastrick and Company at Stourbridge with the ironmaster James Foster. The firm's Stourbridge Engine Works built the Agenoria of 1829 for the Shutt End Railway in Staffordshire and the Stourbridge Lion for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company of the United States — the locomotive that made the first commercial steam railway run in North America when it operated at Honesdale, Pennsylvania on 8 August 1829. The Agenoria survives at the National Railway Museum, York.

Rastrick's role as one of the three judges at the Rainhill Trials of October 1829 placed him at the centre of one of the decisive moments in railway history. He and his fellow judges John Kennedy and Nicholas Wood evaluated the competing locomotives — Rocket, Novelty, Sans Pareil, Perseverance, and Cycloped — against the specified conditions and selected Stephenson's Rocket as the winner, the decision that effectively settled the direction of railway locomotive development for the next century.

As a civil engineer Rastrick worked on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the London and Brighton Railway, and designed the Ouse Viaduct at Balcombe — one of the most architecturally distinguished railway structures of the early Victorian era. He died at Sayes Court, Chertsey on 1 November 1856.