This paper is concerned with the dynamic modeling for the hardware-in-the-loop simulation of lateral vibrations of a railway vehicle. The resulting dynamic model is a nine degree-of-freedom model which can describe the lateral, roll and yaw motions of the car body and two bogies. It is assumed that the external disturbances come from wheel motions. In order to test the efficacy of the model, the linear quadratic regulator and the sky-hook control algorithm were designed and applied to the model. The simulation results show that both control algorithms are effective in suppressing the vibrations of railway vehicles.