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As the investigation into the deadliest accident in the history of the Metro-North Railroad got underway on Wednesday, officials said they still could not explain how or why a sport-utility vehicle became stranded on the train tracks.

A crowded commuter train traveling north through Westchester County slammed into the S.U.V. on Tuesday night, setting off a devastating explosion and fire that killed six people. Fifteen people were being treated at local hospitals, state officials said.

State officials, who had said on Tuesday that seven people were killed, revised the number downward on Wednesday morning, saying that six people had died — five train passengers and the driver of the car, according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Mr. Cuomo, appearing on several morning television interviews, said that there was significant traffic near the railroad crossing where the accident happened and that it did not seem that the woman driving the vehicle, a black Jeep Cherokee, was trying to beat the train at the crossing at Lakeview Avenue in Valhalla, N.Y.

VALHALLA, N.Y. — Hundreds of feet of electrified rail skewered the first two carriages of a New York commuter train in a collision with a car at a railroad crossing, a federal investigator said on Wednesday, describing the area's worst rail crash in decades.

Investigators were focused on why the car was stopped at the crossing near the suburb of White Plains north of New York City before the Metro-North train crashed into it during Tuesday evening's rush hour, pushing the vehicle about 1,000 feet down the line.

The rail broke into long pieces, penetrating the first train carriage as a fire broke out, apparently fueled by gasoline in the vehicle's fuel tank, gutted the rail car's interior, he said. At least one section of the electrified, or "third," rail also entered the second carriage near its ceiling.