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Before the European Industrial Revolution, rails were made of long wood, which was several inches wide. Under the wooden rails, a section of wood was placed horizontally every two to three feet as sleepers. The sleepers were mainly used to fix the wooden rails to keep them at the specified width. The wheels running on them were also made of wood. At that time, steel could not be mass-produced, and iron was also a very expensive material. Wooden rails were easily worn. Later, people pasted thin long iron sheets on their surfaces and fixed them on the rails with nails. This not only extended the service life of the rails, but also reduced friction resistance. This was the most primitive rail.

With the advancement of ironmaking technology, the first section of rails appeared in the world in 1767. The material used was malleable cast iron.

In 1830, the British Vignolis and the American Svens designed a rail with an "inverted T" cross section.

The cast iron rails produced in 1831 were about 1.8 meters long, fish-belly-shaped, and L-shaped in cross section. These designs can increase strength, and the two ends of the rails can be fixed on the sleepers. The railway paved with this cast iron track is called "plate railway", which is mainly used to connect coal mines, iron mines and ironworks.

In 1839, the Vignoles rail used to connect the railway between London and Croydon in the UK was I-shaped, which could be easily fixed on the sleepers using spikes.

With the development of large-scale liquid steel metallurgy technology, steel rails that are harder than rails were manufactured in 1857 and successfully rolled in the UK in 1857. The rails gradually evolved into I-shaped, and the smelting and rolling processes gradually took shape.

In 1964, France first used a universal rolling mill to roll rails. The entire rail section was symmetrically processed and formed under the simultaneous action of horizontal and vertical rollers. Since then, Japan has also adopted the universal method to roll rails for high-speed railways.