Contractor's Cattle Car #260 (Yale Shops) c. 1884
BCA Photograph No. 74936
BCA Negative No. D-8593
Photo in Onderdonk Album, #5, p. 10. (BCA Accession No. 98401-6)

When a semblance of railway service was begun in January of 1884, no passenger coaches had been built. Onderdonk's shops would soon, however, build a number of cattle cars in order to handle the lucrative trade of carrying cattle to market. There were a number of ranches in the Nicola Valley and near Lytton, and the principal markets for them were in New Westminster and Victoria. The cattle were normally brought to Yale and from there were put aboard the sternwheelers that plied the Fraser to New Westminster, and across the Straits of Georgia to Victoria, then the largest city in the province. The first transportation of cattle occurred in mid-February, 1884, and was described in The Inland Sentinel of February 14, 1884. Proper cattle cars were probably constructed after that date.

There was at least a temporary opportunity for Onderdonk to run the trains for his own profit before the line was handed over to the CPR Syndicate. On occasion, the same make-shift cattle cars that had been used to bring livestock to market were used on the return trip to bring paying passengers up the Fraser to Yale for $5.50. An article in The Inland Sentinel, on January 31, 1884, relates one such trip between Port Moody and Yale. The Fraser, during winter months, was closed to most navigation because of icing. Eventually, Onderdonk's Yale shops produced cabooses which improved the lot of the passengers, and eventually coaches, although passengers ran considerable risks of personal injury, as is related by The Inland Sentinel in many of its news reports. For travel above Yale, along the Fraser canyon, the risks were even greater, as is reported in the paper on February 21, 1884.