CPR Bridge near Lytton, c. 1884
BCA Call Number: C-05233
BCA Catalogue Number: HP051761
BCA Accession Number: 193501-001

The cataloguing information at the BC Archives suggests a date of 1888 for this picture, but the same photograph is in the collection of the City of Vancouver Archives (CAN.P.183) and includes a long description, and is entitled there as Cisco Bridge, Canadian Pacific Railway, Cisco, B.C., June 1884. The descriptive text notes that the date of the first through passenger train from Port Moody to Lytton was on June 19, 1884, and that this photograph may precede that event by a few days. It suggests that the locomotive is the 'Nicola' (No. 6), one of the new 4-4-0's purchased by Onderdonk in 1884, which was landed at Port Moody on May 21, 1884. The box car is numbered 202 and is typical of the boxcars built by Onderdonk at Yale.

The text goes on to quote (from Early Vancouver, Vol. 3, p. 187, by J.S. Matthews) a conversation with Edward Everett (Ned) Austin, a CPR locomotive engineer:

I took the first train across the Fraser at Cisco. The elite of Victoria all came to Yale for the opening of the bridge across the Fraser at Cisco. We fixed up seats on flat cars at Yale and loaded the guests onto that, Onderdonk and all the rest together. We started off from Yale with myself at the throttle. Then, on the other side of the bridge, the ladies and gentlemen had a picnic; no speeches that I can recall, but they certainly had a jolly time. It was a grand crowd; a grand day; fine weather, and all kinds of eatables and drinkables. Then we started back for Yale.