 This event was heralded worldwide as an engineering marvel resulting in many organised sight-seeing parties from overseas to view it.According to NSW Planning Department documents, in international references, John Whitton is recognised as one of approximately twenty of the greatest railway civil engineers in the first century of world railway construction.The achievement of his crossings of the Great Divide was superlative at the time and in terms of British railway civil engineering was only exceeded by the difficult crossing of the Indian Ghats.