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NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — Four crew members suffered cuts and bruises after three Union Pacific freight trains crashed Wednesday, a wire service reported. The crash ignited a fire and forced the closing of a portion U.S. Highway 30.

Twenty-nine of 265 cars were destroyed in the 4:30 a.m. CDT crash. Six locomotives were on the trains, and the four directly involved in the wreck can be repaired, railroad spokesman Mark Davis said.

According to Davis, an empty westbound coal train had stopped, and crew members were going to inspect it when another empty coal train rear-ended it. Then an empty eastbound train on nearby track on its way to Kansas City, Mo., to pick up automobiles somehow got entangled in the wreckage, possibly by running into a derailed car, he said.

Two locomotives – one of which exploded into flames – lay on their sides from one train. A locomotive from another train was tilted at a 45-degree angle away from the track.

Train cars piled up one on top of another, and one car lay across part of two-lane U.S. 30, which is about 20 yards from the tracks.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were heading to the scene, Davis said.

Track that was torn up in the accident will have to be replaced, he said. Railroad officials hoped to reopen the tracks by this morning.

No hazardous materials were involved in the fire, which may have been caused by diesel fuel from the train engines, Davis said. The fire burned for more than two hours before it was extinguished.

The accident occurred five miles east of North Platte, about 10 miles east of the Union Pacific’s largest rail yard.