A train conductor was killed and three other crew members injured when two CSX freight trains collided near Zephyrhills early this morning.
Two tanker cars derailed in the crash spilled 23,000 gallons of concentrated liquid fertilizer onto the tracks.
Though authorities feared the chemical could seep into groundwater, the fertilizer pooled mostly in a trackside ditch and was no direct threat to neighbors in the rural community.
CSX officials were still unclear what cause two trains to speed toward each other on the same track at 2:30 a.m. Monday. They hadn't ruled out either human or mechanical error.
One train, consisting of 136 cars of mixed freight, was heading south from Waycross, Ga., to Tampa. The northbound train was carrying 60 loads of gravel from Miami to Wildwood.
The accident scene at Old Lakeland Highway and Melrose Avenue, known as Vitis Junction, is where the tracks fork, one branch heading to Tampa, the other to Miami.
"This is a juction point and you have trains intersecting from different directions," railroad spokesman Gary Sease said as cranes lifted wrecked box cars from the tracks.
The name of the dead conductor - he was in a locomotive on the gravel train - had yet to be released pending notification of his family.
The three other crew members were treated at local hospitals for minor injuries, Sease said.
