The seismic safety of lifeline infrastructure is of great importance for disaster prevention and mitigation and earthquake relief work in China, as railway bridges are more associated with the safety and stability of personnel transfer and material transportation. Based on the analysis of the seismic data and seismic damage investigation of railway bridges in earthquake areas, combined with practical experience from seismic design of railway bridges in China and relevant scientific research results, three issues of the Code for Seismic Design of Railway Engineering have been successively published in China. This paper reviewed the 60-year development history of codes for seismic design of railway bridges in China and classified the historical periods in which seismic design work for railway bridges has been performed in China. A comparison and summary of the sections regarding railway bridges in the 1977, 1987, and 2009 issues of the Code for Seismic Design of Railway Engineering revealed that the code series gradually embodies the concept of performance-based design, with more refined site classification, more scientific consideration of seismic effects, and more explicit provisions for seismic structural measures of railway bridges. Thus, the objective of this study is to offer a reference to improve and refine the methods for predicting seismic damage of railway bridges in seismic zones.