[Raleigh]

This site: http://antiqueradios.com/archive.shtml has pdf copies of Elements of Radio Servicing you can download for free. Chapter 22, page 428, covers generic alignment quite well. About the only thing you need is a signal generator, as Oscar says, and the schematic and parts locations for the radio you are working on.

Riders pages usually have alignment instructions for specific radios, but for a simple radio you don't really need them.

Alignment for AM and Short Wave is pretty simple. There are three steps, usually:

1) Adjust the capacitors and/or cores on the IF transformers to exactly 455 KHz (or whatever the IF frequency your radio is set to--usually on the schematic.) -- use a signal generator

2) Adjust any antenna trimmers for greatest throughput -- use any radio station or a signal generator

3) Adjust the tuning to align the dial pointer with the numbers on the dial. Works best with a signal generator or you can use two radio stations at the high and low ends of the band.

If you have a multi-band radio you may need to repeat steps 2 and 3 with each band. FM is different. I've never aligned one, so I can't tell you anything about it. My signal generator has a generic procedure for aligning FM.