Russian national standards for rails establish technical requirements, acceptance rules and quality control methods. These are very important to ensure the quality and service durability of rails. Requirements for rail production variation within a period from 1960 to the present considered, peculiarities of their accounting in the standards shown. It was demonstrated that stricter requirements to rails resulted in the development of new steel compositions, the creation and introduction of new technological processes in steel production, rail rolling and heat treatment, as well as new methods of production quality control. Basic technical requirements for rails produced according to the national standard of theRussian Federationand to the European Norm presented. It was pointed out that the current national standard GOST R 51685‒2013 was elaborated accounting the requirements of the latest foreign standard EN 3674-1:2011+A1:2017. However, the former is not equivalent to the latter because it pertains to Russian rail types and contains requirements corresponding to the Russian climatic and geographical conditions, as well as the track facilities system used by OJSC RZD. It was shown that rails, meeting the current standard requirements, in terms of operational resistivity exceed the resistivity level of best foreign analogues. At present, a new standard is being elaborated accounting the need of increasing the service life of railway rails under conditions of high load, low climatic temperatures, higher-speed combined train operation and high-speed running, and high working capacity. The list of key issues presented, that are mirrored in the new standard draft, which accounts for the goal of mastering new rail categories and the increased requirements of OJSC RZD to rails quality.