History of Sentul Depot

NAMED after a local tree, Sentul has a long history of being an old railway town established since the late 1800s.

Starting from 1904, the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR) began building a complex of railway maintenance workshops at Sentul known as the Central Railway Workshops, or Sentul Works.

Considered one of the finest integrated engineering workshops in the world, it served the needs of FMSR in the early 1900s and for KTM up to the early 2000s. In its heyday, Sentul Works employed over 7,000 workers.

The 200,000sq ft (18,580sq m) area is dotted by large brick buildings and metal sheds, once used as depots, engineering workshops and storage areas for steam and diesel locomotives and railway cars.

Main activities included the assembly and servicing of railway carriages, with a majority of the parts needed by the rail industry manufactured in its foundry, sawmills and workshops.

In its glory days, Sentul Works, now known as Sentul Depot, even built train parts for the railway network in India.

Sentul was one of the last towns in the country bombed by British planes during World War II.

Weeks before the end of the war in 1945, the depot was heavily attacked by B-29 bombers.

After the war, the workshops were partially rebuilt but sadly, never regained their original glory, with many of the former colonial railway buildings left as ruins.

What is left today is a mix of century-old as well as slightly newer structures from the post-war reconstruction works.