The focus of this research is to investigate how different design principles put into use while aligning a new railway geometry alters the nature of the infrastructure, railway operations and the cost of construction of the project. The design principles are differentiated by fixing different maximum gradients for each alternative alignment. Naturally, the difference in gradient changes the infrastructures like bridge/tunnel lengths, curves and earthworks. So, the resultant overall cost for the different method changes. And these differences are analyzed with aspects like cost efficiency, sustainability, railway operation friendly. The location chosen suitable for this research is new possible link between Kongsvinger and Mora. This location has a challenging terrain with mountains, cliffs, plateaus and big water bodies. This terrain with diverse features gives a good opportunity to explore the end results we expect out of this research. The research and analysis gave interesting results and a broad perspective of understanding on the design principles involved in drafting an alignment in a mountain terrain. The results showed that the flatter gradients are cheaper in terms of operating but costlier in terms of construction and the vice versa for the steeper gradients. Also different inter dependability of different parameters like curves, infrastructures, gradients, energy consumptions were found.