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Hi all! I am new to this forum. I was wondering if I could find out some more information on the Lake State accidents recently. My cousin lives in Oscoda and told me US 23 in Tawas has been plagued by 3 to 4 accidents, with the closing of 23 a few times because the potlatch cars spilled. I have also heard that 1 of the D&M RS units might have been involved in one of the accidents.

LSRC has been having major problems with drainage along their tracks for a while now. they had like 6 derailments in 7 weeks. 3 of them in bay city and the other 4 in Tawas. Now i'm not too sure about the tawas area, but the tracks down here were just giving way under the weight of the trains due to the wet weather and the poor upkeep of the tracks. LSRC needs to replace thousands of ties on their system to bring this under control, and although they replaced a few areas, there are still many more placed in desperate need to work. As for a RS unit involved in the derailment, NO.. unless it was a loco on the head end, no actual locos were involved in any of the 7 derailments. only freight cars. and its its not potash cars that are derailing.. they carry flyash.. or the remains of coal burned for the creation of electric. Potash, is a fertalizer potassium to be exact. feel free to ask any other questions you have, or shoot me a private message if you like. Hope I helped.

Thank you. It helped a lot. I was up that way in September for my great uncles funeral. My mom showed us the KOA campground. As we crossed the tracks I could not believe my eyes when I saw the rails. They were EXTREMELY warped!! I had never seen such a horribile ROW. Not to mention I never saw a Signal except for the crossing gates in tawas.

I do know that recently they got all New (for them) ex-CN locos. Hopefully they well keep around the RS units and the C425m's.

As Patrick said, there were 6 derailments, 3 in BC, 3 in Tawas. The Lake State has been Extremely fortunate that none of the locos were damaged. Seeing as right now they could have maybe 3 totaled engines from the derailment. I am unsure if the engines derailed in the second Tawas derailment, as most of it was cleaned up by the time I got there.


As for the track...yeah, its bad. The D&M was better at keeping their diesels in shape than on track work.


Feel free to PM me (or Patrick) for any Lake State questions.

Thanks Guys. I will.