Three people were injured when two trains collided on a Union Pacific track south of downtown San Antonio, Texas early yesterday morning.

The predawn accident happened at a UP bridge over the San Antonio River just
west of where Saint Mary's Street and Roosevelt Avenue meet.

Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis says a southbound UP freight train was
switching tracks when it collided with a northbound UP freight and derailed.
Two locomotives and 12 freight cars of the southbound train derailed. Davis
says both engines and five cars toppled into the river. Reports say more than 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the river, drawing hazardous-materials specialists to the scene.

Two crew members of the southbound freight and a homeless person under the
bridge were injured. Conductor- Frederico Pena, Engineer- Robert Moore, and a homeless man Jose were being treated at area hospitals. Davis says the engineer suffered a broken ankle, while the conductor had a broken wrist. He says the homeless person suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

A more detailed report of the incident says that the southbound train, bound for Mexico, collided with the rear set of stack cars of an eastbound (northbound at the time) near the Tower 112 Junction in San Antonio around 03:00 CDT. The eastbound was switching tracks from the Westbound to Eastbound main and both trains were moving at or below a posted 20 mile-per-hour speed limit.

The eastbound intermodal train, with 3 locomotives, sustained damage only to the rear set of stack wells and had the last car removed from the train before departing the wreck site at around 17:45 CDT last evening. The Mexico-bound train had two units, both which appeared to sustain heavy damage.

The lead unit, an SD40-2 hit the trailing double-stack car as it was entering the switch at the crossover. That unit derailed landing in a concrete drainage basin, while the trailing SD60 landed in the San Antonio River, spilling several thousand gallons of diesel fuel into the San Antonio River. A total of twenty-three
cars were involved in the incident.

Amtrak has been forced to reroute several trains around the wreck site, which has affected passenger pick-ups in San Antonio.

There is no timeline on the route