Industrial Railways of Malaya

60 years ago there was very little, if any, mention of Industrial Railways in what was then known as Malaya. The early railways were built in part to connect tin mining areas to port and to open up the inland areas to prospectors, and eventually most of these became connected together to form the Federated Malay States Railway which came into being in 1901. By 1918 Singapore was connected to Bangkok via the west coast but the east coast had a few ports but no railway. Prospectors had meanwhile work inland from the east coast ports and discovered large quantities of iron ore and other metals, especially at Bukit Iban and Bukit Besi and in each case the mining Company built and ran their own railways. In his 1973 book Allan Stanistreet briefly mentioned these two lines and also another two smaller ones but in all cases there were few details. A few enthusiasts discovered these lines from about 1960 onwards and took photographs for their own use and more recently have started to share them on the internet or passed them on and little by little I have acquired information and photographs from some. Research of manufacturers data has identified at least most of the locomotives so I intend to start creating pages for each undertaking. First I will index all those I know about on this page and then I will add links to each page created in this index.

Eastern Mining & Metals Company

Malayan Collieries

Rompin Mining Company

Associated Pan Malaysia Cement

Created 13th August 2024.

Updated
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