The College of Railway Technology at Lanzhou Jiaotong University originated from the Lanzhou Railway Machinery School established in 1950, which is one of the earliest railway institutions in the country. Following the railway reform, it was fully integrated into Lanzhou Jiaotong University in 2005. Since 2008, it has commenced the enrollment of higher vocational students, evolving into a vocational college in the rail transit domain that draws on the resources of an undergraduate institution. In 2024, it was designated as the Gansu Province Craftsmanship College by the Gansu Provincial Federation of Trade Unions.

The college is composed of seven departments, two divisions, and one center, offering majors that cover various systems of rail transportation, including traffic, machinery, engineering, electrical, vehicle, power supply, and others. Currently, there are over 800 vocational students enrolled. The college has established nine training centers with 44 training rooms (fields) in the areas of electrical engineering, mechanical fundamentals and manufacturing, locomotives, railway vehicles and air conditioning, electrified railway and power supply technology, railway signaling and transportation, urban rail transportation, computer science, and railway engineering.

Since its founding, the college has cultivated approximately 10,000 graduates, who are now distributed among national railway bureaus, engineering bureaus, subway companies, and other large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. In recent years, the average employment rate has been over 90%. The college has made significant contributions to serving the railway industry and regional economic and social development through vocational education.Its graduates are highly favored by employers due to their capabilities of being immediately productive, retaining their positions and achieving on-the-job development.

The college strictly adheres to the goal of cultivating application-oriented high-skilled talents,attaching great importance to the development of students' practical and innovative capabilities, and actively carrying out training in innovation and entrepreneurship skills. Guided by the spirit of "promoting learning and teaching through competitions, and integrating competition with learning," in recent years, the college has meticulously organized various academic and skill competitions for teachers and students. It has achieved excellent results in national and provincial competitions such as the Chinese Engineering Robot Competition and International Open, the National College Students' Advanced Mapping Technology and Product Information Modeling Innovation Competition, the Belt and Road and BRICS Countries Skills Development and Technological Innovation Competition, the National 3D Digital Innovation Design Competition, the China International College Students' Innovation Competition, and the National College Students' Language and Literature Ability Competition.

Educational Objective: Based on the demand for high-quality technical and skilled talents in the rail transportation industry, we aim to build a higher vocational college with distinctive industry characteristics, clear professional advantages, and a certain level of popularity, specializing in rail transportation.

Educational Guiding Principle: We uphold a teaching-centered methodology with an employment orientation.We persist the integration of industry and education, as well as cooperation between schools and enterprises, implementing a teaching-learning-practice integration model. We actively explore and practice the educational and teaching philosophy of "integration of knowledge and action, equal emphasis on learning and doing."

Talent Cultivation Goals: Endeavor to foster high-quality technical and skilled talents who are well-suited to the front-line requirements of the rail transit industry in production, construction, management, operation and maintenance. These individuals should be all-rounded in morality, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics, and labor, possessing good professional ethics, a sense of dedication, and engineering literacy.