Another siren at 6.45am signalled the morning rush, sending them pedalling down Sentul’s narrow roads toward the towering gates of the Malayan Railways’ Central Workshops.
By 7am, another siren, the clatter of tools and the rhythmic hissing of steam engines filled the air, mingled with the scent of coal and grease.
For kids like Guna Ramachandran, life revolved around the railway too. The sirens signalled when to wake up, when to go to school, and best of all – when to play.
“We’ll be waiting for the four o’clock siren so we can go out and play football,” the 70-year-old shared with FMT Lifestyle. “A lot of people didn’t have clocks or watches. Life was choreographed by the siren.”
Guna’s grandfather, a migrant from Thanjavur, India, and his father worked at the Central Workshops in Sentul, built in 1905 by the Federated Malay States Railways.
“It was something else living near the railway quarters. You could hear the steam locomotives, smell the soot. It was a really noisy place, but that was life for us.
“The first time I stepped in the workshops as a young boy, it felt like stepping into a different world,” the father of two recalled.
But times changed. The railway workshops that once kept Sentul buzzing are now just a memory. “When it closed, I expected it to become a museum,” the PJ-based Guna admitted. “It had such a rich history. But that didn’t happen.”
That sense of loss, along with encouragement from friends, pushed him to write “Sentul Gems: A Hidden Treasure of the East”.
The 124-page self-published book chronicles the rise and fall of the Central Workshops, capturing a piece of Sentul’s past before it disappears completely.
“I was determined to leave a legacy behind for future generations as to what the workshop did.”
Much of his research was done during the pandemic lockdown, scouring digital archives, old newspapers, and books written about the Malayan railways.
Later, he visited the National Archives, uncovering detailed Malayan Railway reports filled with black-and-white photographs and records of the workshop’s golden years.
He also spoke to former railwaymen – some now in their late 80s and 90s – who shared their memories of life inside the workshop, which Guna included in the final chapter of the book.
In “Sentul Gems”, readers will see that the Sentul railway workshop was more than a maintenance hub – it was an industrial powerhouse.
Among the world’s largest at that time, the workshop ran entirely in-house, with thousands of workers keeping Malaya’s railways running – no outsourcing, no shortcuts.
He shared a particularly striking story from his research. In the 1950s, when the then Agong’s Rolls-Royce broke down, the chief mechanical engineer at the workshop, Dalip Singh, was called in to help.
“They got the drawings, fabricated the parts, and fixed the car. All in-house. That’s the kind of skill they had,” Guna enthused.
In the book, Guna also writes that most of the kitchen knives used by his mother when he was a young boy were made in the Tool Room. Even now, a thosai-flipping ladle made in 1975 is still used in his house.
Another surprising discovery Guna made was “how important sports was to the railways”.
In fact, Sentul’s railway community produced some of Malaysia’s top athletes, including the late Mike Shepherdson, the only Malaysian to captain both the national hockey and cricket teams, and former national cricketer Hector Durairatnam
Looking back, Guna isn’t bitter about change. “You can’t romanticise the past,” he said. “History moves on.” But that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten, he said.
His hope? That younger generations can appreciate the craftsmanship and dedication of the people who built Malaysia’s railways. And maybe, just maybe, “Sentul Gems” will spark something more – a play, a documentary, or even an AI-powered recreation of the old workshop.
“There’s always a way to bring history to life,” he mused. And with “Sentul Gems”, Guna’s already taken the first step.
‘Sentul Gems: A Hidden Treasure of the East’ is now available at major bookstores.