A large crane operating at the Black Thunder Mine in northeast Wyoming collapsed and blocked a rail line on Saturday, injuring up to three people, a federal mine officials said.

Bill Denning, spokesman for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in Denver, said federal inspectors were on their way to the coal mine, about 180 miles north of Cheyenne.

Denning said there were no reports of any deaths in the accident.

Attempts to reach officials with the Thunder Basin Coal Company, which operates the mine, were not immediately successful Saturday afternoon.

Truman Cavender, a security officer at the mine 12 miles east of Wright, said he was ordered to call for ambulances early Saturday afternoon. He said the accident occurred at a new construction site, about seven miles from the mine headquarters.

Deputy Kevin Theis of the Campbell County Sheriff's Office in Gillette said the department received a call about the collapse shortly after noon.

He said at least one injured person was taken from the scene by helicopter. He said he understood that the person was taken to the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper.

A nursing supervisor at the Wyoming Medical Center said the hospital's helicopter was out on a flight, but said that no one had been brought to the hospital for treatment yet.

Debbie Rhoades, a nursing supervisor at Campbell County Memorial Hospital in Gillette, said the hospital was expecting to receive a couple of patients from the crane collapse. She said she didn't know how serious their injuries were.

The crane was moving a conveyor tube over a railroad line when the crane collapsed, said Gus Melonas, spokesman for the BNSF Railway in Seattle. He said rubble had blocked the railroad line.

Melonas said the crane was being used to build a loadout silo for coal. He said the 260-foot section of conveyor tube was intended to cross over BNSF's track. He said the section weighed about 500,000 pounds.

The Casper Star-Tribune reported in April that construction and crane crews were moving a 2.7 million-pound crane, described as one of the largest in the world, into place for the project. The paper reported that Lampson International, a crane company, owned the crane.

Melonas said he understood that it was the Lampson crane that collapsed. An attempt to reach a spokesman for Lampson International wasn't immediately successful on Saturday.