Location: Baw Beese Lake, MI

Baw Beese Lake exists about two miles southeast of downtown Hillsdale and is a series of five lakes. The Old Road of the New York Central (former LS&MS) straddled the north side of the main lake here.

Image Info: Two photos of a serious derailment alongside Baw Beese Lake in Hillsdale County in 1924. The NYC wrecker is likely out of Toledo.

Notes

The railroad served an ice house at this location.

Also known as Sand Beach.

Time Line

1924. May 11. L.W. Dietsch of Toledo, a fireman, is dead from severe scald burns and wounds, and Engineer Fred Van Allen miraculously escaped death when train No. 647 on the NYC jumped the track at Sand Beach, three miles south of Hillsdale at 7:30 last night. 

The wreck is believed to have been caused by a two-inch burr on the track which had dropped from some train or had been placed there. Officials found the burr at the side of the track and it fitted into a dent in the rail nearly a mile from the scene of the wreck. 

Early investigation showed that either the pony truck or the ending or the trucks of the locomotive tank were thrown off the track and ditched the train as it hit the derail at the ice house track at the point where the main line first touches Baw Beese lake. When the big locomotive left the rails it swerved down a 12-foot embankment, running headlong into a sand hill and turned over, carrying with it the tank car, which it tore loose from the baggage coach.

None of the passengers are known to be seriously injured. Dietsche was thrown 15 feet from the cab into the Lake. It is believed that the steam pressure's force, which escaped through the broken boiler, caused him to be hurled through space into the water. The engineer, also of Toledo, worked himself free from the wreckage. [BCE-1924-0512]