BWM Talk Series: ‘SENTUL GEMS” – Hidden Treasure of the East’ by Gunasegaran Ramachandran

Posted on June 11, 2025

Organised by Badan Warisan Malaysia

Date: 19 July 2025
Time: 10.30 am
Location: Badan Warisan Heritage Centre, No. 2 Jalan Stonor, Kuala Lumpur
Fee: RM20 per person (non-members), Free for BWM members
Light refreshments will be served.
Click HERE to register

About The Talk

The Central Workshops, located in Sentul of the Federated Malay States Railways (FMSR) was initially set up by the Colonial British Administration in 1905 as a stand-alone “One-stop Centre” to provide the engineering support to keep the railways as a well-oiled mode of transport to transport the raw materials that Malaya produced i.e. rubber and tin via the ports of the Straits Settlement (primarily Singapore and Penang) to the epicenter of the Empire – London, England to produce the goods and services that can be re-exported to the colonies to sustain the Empire.

Fast Forward to circa 1997, the 4pm siren sounded, and the tradesmen and staff started to leave the workshop that had provided the support for the Malayan railways to run its system smoothly with minimal interruptions (except for the war years) for the better part of 90 years of the 20th century. The doors finally closed at the workshops, and an eerie silence pervades the environs of the complex today.

Gunasegaran will share content from his book to document the various “shops” that constituted the workshop, so that future generations would know about the importance and historical value of the site, and its contribution to the economic development of Colonial Malaya and subsequently the Federation of Malaysia. The evolution of Sentul as a Railway town for the better part of the 20th century was because of the existence of the workshop.

About The Speaker

The author was born in Sentul in 1954 to a second generation railway family, his father and grandfather worked in the Railway workshop complex in Sentul. He completed his early education in La Salle Sentul and left to the UK in 1972, then graduated with a Chemical Engineering degree in 1978 at the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, UK. He subsequently worked in the field of Industrial Water and process treatment in the downstream sector of the Oil, Gas and Power industries in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia and East Asia that spanned 40 years. He retired in 2020 and keeps busy volunteering for two charities. For relaxation, he enjoys a game of golf regularly. He is married to Rani, has two daughters – Suba and Veenah – and resides in Petaling Jaya.