The signalman and 17 others were killed and 36 injured on Saturday as a passenger train ploughed into the back of another train at full speed south of Cairo, said the general prosecutor's office in charge of the official probe.
The first train, heading to Fayyum, 100km from the capital, made an unscheduled stop after the driver spotted a water buffalo on the track, it said in a statement.
But signalman Sayyed Ali Tehewi left his cabin early to catch a train home, causing a second train to crash into the first.
In a tragic twist, Tehewi had left to catch that second train, on a southbound route from Cairo to Assyut, 400km from Cairo, and died in the crash, the prosecutor's office said.
The trains collided near Guerzah, close to the town of Al-Ayyat, around 40km from Cairo.
The prosecutor's office said both drivers, one of whom was injured and recovering in hospital, were being questioned by authorities.
Egyptian Nile News television showed footage of rescuers removing heaps of tangled metal from the scene of the accident.
"The wrongdoer will be prosecuted," Transport Minister Mohammed Mansour told Nile News on Saturday.
Al-Ayyat was the scene of Egypt's deadliest ever rail accident when the bodies of at least 361 passengers were recovered from a train following a fire in February 2002
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