The Yunnan section of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, serving as a significant emblem of China’s modern railway heritage, embodies a century of historical memory and cultural integration value. However, with the decline in railway functions, numerous stations along the route encounter various challenges, including damage to the heritage, degradation of the ecological environment, and loss of vitality in surrounding settlements. The comprehensive protection of the entire line proves challenging and necessitates a judicious evaluation of each station settlement, accompanied by the development of systematic, stratified preservation strategies. In response to this practical need, this study, grounded in the theory of cultural routes, examines sixty station settlements along the Yunnan section of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway. It develops a multi-dimensional evaluation model encompassing heritage, environment, and socio-economic systems. Employing comprehensive evaluation methods, it categorizes these settlements within a four-tier protection framework and analyzes the interaction mechanisms between systems using a coupling coordination degree model. The results indicate that the coupling coordination degree of first-and second-tier station settlements exceeds 0.7, significantly surpassing that of third- and fourth-tier station settlements. This demonstrates a positive feedback loop involving heritage protection, economic development, and environmental enhancement. Based on these findings, this study advocates differentiated protection strategies and collaborative mechanisms. Regarding protection strategies, diverse measures such as conservation, revitalization, maintenance, and control are employed for station settlements at various levels. Concerning collaborative mechanisms, a networked protection pathway, comprising “ first-level leadership – second-level support – third-and fourth-level linkage”, is established to facilitate coordinated development among station settlements, thereby fostering heritage safeguarding and regional sustainable development.