Shooting began in 2006 and continued intermittently over the next five years, primarily on the main line between Calgary and Vancouver, with the cooperation of the CPR.

The film takes the audience on a steam journey along the historic Canadian Pacific route from Vancouver to Montreal, focusing on the western mountain portion.

The period of exploration and survey is quickly summarized over aerial shots illustrating the enormity of the task at hand and the variety of the landscape.

One of the narrative difficulties was how to combine a linear and literal eastbound journey with a story about a construction project that advanced simultaneously from east and west and continued over decades.

As the train proceeds eastward, the film tells the story of the challenges the builders faced in the granite cliffs of the Fraser Valley, where thousands of lives were lost; among the fragile, erosive sandstone hoodoos of the Thompson River; and bypassing the vast, deep lakes of the interior.

Coming out of the Selkirks, the film takes a side trip southbound along the Columbia River and with the use of CGI, tells the story of the 1903 collapse of Turtle Mountain, which partially buried the mining town of Frank, Alberta, and the heroic rescue of an oncoming train.

Returning to the main line, the train follows the Kicking Horse River up the west side of the Rocky Mountains and the film looks at the challenges faced by the builders and the engines coping with the dangerous grades of the ‘Big Hill’.

The final moments are shots of the weathered stone and wood gravestones of unnamed workers—a monument to “the country they built—Canada.”[2] A train and history buff, writer/director Stephen Low had wanted to tell the story of the building of the CPR through Rogers’ Pass following the success of his first 35 mm documentary, Challenger: An Industrial Romance (1980), made at Canada’s National Film Board.

The resulting demo was shown to the CPR who agreed to cooperate with the production of a full-length IMAX film shot primarily on the main line between Vancouver and Calgary.

Low and Lahti worked together to find period-appropriate music for the film, and the original score was created by Montreal composer Michel Cusson.