In order to determine the response of elastic fastener under the action of milling load at any time, the transient analysis of rail was carried out by using the fi nite element analysis software ANSYS Workbench module combined with milling theory. According to the actual working conditions, the milling force follows the Fourier series equation to evaluate the milling transient response of the existing layout structure of a large road maintenance machine. In this paper, two aspects are analyzed to verify the milling transient response of the existing layout structure: the same milling helix angle, diff erent running speed transient analysis; transient analysis of the same running speed and diff erent milling helix angle.