Johore Wooden Railway It was said that the history of Johor railway developments started in the 1869 when
Abu Bakar of Johor (then known as Maharaja) officiated the construction of the Johore Railway, which lines are planned to be built northwards towards
Mount Pulai, from the terminus here. While the line was indeed built from Johor Bahru and it has been operating since 1875 for the first of construction, it was not clear for what function it served and if Johor Bahru had a proper station standing here until 1889 when the railway was reported defunct.
Old FMSR era station The former Johor Bahru railway station under Johore State Railway was opened in 1909 in conjunction with the completion of the final West Coast main link (which will later form the
KTM West Coast Line) sector from Gemas to Johor Bahru after a 5-year construction period starting in 1904. As there weas no land access to Singapore yet at that time, Johor Bahru used to be the southernmost terminus for
Federated Malay States Railways (FMSR) trains on the Malay Peninsula. However, the FMSR had been running combined train-and-ferry services between both the peninsular railway network and the then-Singapore Government Railways network. Both the Johore Government Railways and Singapore Government Railways were integrated under FMSR administration on 1912. The station is able to serve services from linked FMSR railways of Malaya especially from the West Coast states up to
Penang, and to
Pahang on the east. As the FMSR network gradually spread, the old railway station was served by trains to and from Kedah, Perlis and Kelantan as well. It later able to serve trains up to Bangkok when the FMSR network connected to
State Railway of Thailand (SRT) network via Padang Besar in 1918, and with the completion of the East Coast sector to Gua Musang in 1931, the East Coast link (which will later form the
KTM East Coast Line) was connected to the SRT via . After the
Johor–Singapore Causeway was completed in 1923, trains were able to travel across the
Johor Strait and southwards to Tank Road in Singapore. The trains would later terminate at on Keppel Road after its opening in 1932. Johor Bahru has since become one of the main stations of the rail network serving express and mail trains of the railway services especially between the town and Singapore. The station would again become the southern terminus of the FMSR train network when the
Japanese occupation of Singapore strikes in 1942 forced the
British to blow up the Causeway in order to slow down the Imperial Japanese Army's entry into Singapore, severing the only train connection to Singapore. The connection was restored in 1946 after British control was reinstated in both states. Tanjong Pagar would continue to be the FMSR West Coast Line's southern terminus until 2011. In 1948, Johor Bahru station came under the newly-formed Malayan Railways and later after independence,
Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM). As politics changed the state of the regions which ultimately made Singapore and Malaya, later Malaysia, two different countries, Johor Bahru station became part of the international border between the two nations. However, local and express trains remained running uninterrupted between the two countries with the station maintaining its position as an important stop for trains. For a while in the 1980s, it also serve Railbus service between Kulai and Singapore. Different from the road entries of the Causeway, Johor Bahru station, which facilitated railway entries between the two countries, did not really have any immigration and customs clearance facilities for several decades, despite the first border control regulations between the countries were set up in 1967, as immigration and customs clearance were settled in Tanjong Pagar station. However, after the signing of the
Malaysia–Singapore Points of Agreement of 1990 by Malaysia and Singapore, disputes about the agreement and border controls rose, forcing the station to provide an immigration and customs clearance for Singapore-bound trains while the immigration and customs clearance for Malaysia-bound trains remained in Tanjong Pagar station. This practice remained even after the opening of the new Johor Bahru Sentral station. Johor Bahru Sentral eventually replaced the old Johor Bahru station, taking on the latter's immigration and customs clearance responsibilities for southbound trains. The old station closed on 21 October 2010, with proposed plans to turn it into a railway museum.
Johor Bahru Sentral Johor Bahru Sentral is one of the facilities of Malaysia's
Southern Integrated Gateway which aims to provide an integrated entry hub for vehicles from Singapore to enter Malaysia via Johor Bahru, alongside the new
Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) complex and plans for a new bridge to replace the Johor-Singapore Causeway. While plans for the bridge were cancelled indefinitely, the new CIQ complex opened in 2008 for vehicular access. The whole project costed RM2.5 billion. Train services at Johor Bahru Sentral began on 21 October 2010, with
Ibrahim Ismail of Johor officiating the opening ceremony. The station has since taken over the role as the main railway station of Johor Bahru. Following the closure of Tanjong Pagar station on 1 July 2011, Malaysia's and Singapore's immigration and customs clearance for northbound trains were moved and have since been operating from the
Woodlands Train Checkpoint, becoming the new southern terminus of KTM's West Coast Line. The Woodlands Train Checkpoint also houses Singapore's immigration and customs clearance for southbound trains, while Malaysia's counterpart has since been operating from Johor Bahru Sentral until this day. Although major
KTM Intercity trains stopped here in the early years of its opening, the station later saw a sharp decrease in passengers causing many of the major West Coast services to be reduced and later terminated in 2016. These services would later be replaced by
KTM ETS services. Up until 31st December 2025, only three trips of the former
Ekspres Selatan up and one trip of the
Ekspres Rakyat Timuran to in Kelantan were serving this station. Cross-border services, which has since been branded as
Shuttle Tebrau, runs exclusively between Johor Bahru Sentral and the
Woodlands Train Checkpoint, with 18 Woodlands-bound trips and 13 Johor Bahru-bound trips. The
COVID-19 pandemic also affected services, with some services being temporarily suspended, but were gradually restored by 2022. Between January and June 2022, the station was closed as part of
Gemas-Johor Bahru electrification and double tracking project (EDTP), the final phase of the electrification and double tracking of the West Coast Line. During this time,
Shuttle Tebrau services were temporarily suspended. The station reopened in mid-June 2022 with the resumption of the
Shuttle Tebrau service, and both the
Ekspres Selatan and
Ekspres Rakyat Timuran returned in July 2022. The EDTP was officially completed and
KTM ETS services were officially extended to Johor Bahru Sentral on 12 December 2025, becoming the new southern terminus of the KTM ETS network. On 1 January 2026, KTM Intercity's
Ekspres Selatan service to was officially terminated, to make way for more KTM ETS services. The
Shuttle Tebrau service will also be terminated in the future, following the projected completion of the
Johor Bahru–Singapore Rapid Transit System in 2027. This will mark KTM's complete withdrawal from Singapore. ==Station components==