With the rapid construction of high-speed railway in China and other developing countries, as well as the continuous expansion of its distance and scale, the load of power transmission line along the railway is increased accordingly. However, the existing design standards for power transmission line of high speed railway cannot specify the demand factor for the electrical load supplied by power transmission line, and there is no unified calculation method for the demand factor, resulting in a large difference between the theoretical value and the actual value of transformer capacity and cable section selected for engineering project, which takes huge additional energy penalty from the utility companies. To address the problems and formulate a more accurate selection standard for the load demand factor of high-speed railway power transmission line (HSR-PTL), the demand factor is calculated from the data measured on several typical high-speed railway operating in China. Firstly, the load model of HSR-PTL is proposed. According to the function and characteristics of the several kinds of load in HSR-PTL, each load is classified for load demand modelling. By measuring the load of several typical operating HSR-PTL, based on the proposed model, the value of the required coefficient of each load type based on the measured data is proposed. The calculated demand factor can be applied as an applicable reference for the design of high-speed railway power system.