Abstract Research purposes: Alignment design of railway line is a complicated systematic engineering with involving matters of all aspects，requiring high technicality and having significance to the integral work of entire construction. In this paper the review is made for the development experience of the design means for alignment of railway line from making design manually by using drawing board to making design with using CAD System instead of drawing board to draw plane drawing，vertical section drawing，the ideas are expressed on the issues of the progress，innovation and development direction of design technology for railway line，and the key technical problems to be solved and research projects are pointed out for design of railway line with continuous improvement and development of design standard of railway line.
Research Conclusions: It is necessary to make development of multidimensional design environment from 3-dimensonal design environment and make development of manually intelligent design from CAD. Establishing digital railway alignment experts system is a great innovation for the technology of railway alignment design. In this way，the production efficiency of railway alignment design can be much improved ， the design time can be shortened and the design quality be improved.
2007, Vol. 24 
