He later wrote, “I never saw a railway built on any such hillside as this.” The Coquihalla section with its raging river and granite-walled canyon set records for its construction. The 39-mile (63 km) section from Coquihalla Summit to the CPR junction near Hope needed 43 bridges, 13 tunnels, and 16 snowsheds. Construction crews used 22 million board feet of timber and 4500 tons of steel. The Coquihalla Valley had the most expensive mile of railway track in the world. The average cost per mile for Canadian railways at that time was $27,000. One mile in the upper Coquihalla canyon cost more than $300,000!