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The Philadelphia, Newtown and New York Railroad was a railroad in southeastern Pennsylvania that is now a part of the SEPTA commuter rail system as the Fox Chase Branch. Despite the name, it only ever extended between Philadelphia and Newtown, Pennsylvania.
The first effort to build a railroad to Newtown was incorporated as the Bristol and Newtown railroad company in 1836. [1] [2] Among the commissioners appointed by the state legislature to build the railroad was Charles Lombaert who had completed the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad which ran through Bristol, Pennsylvania in 1833. [3]
The Newtown Railroad was chartered on April 2, 1860, as the Philadelphia & Montgomery County Railroad Company. The Newtown's early history was a part of the competition for rail traffic between New York City and Philadelphia. By the "Protection Act" of March 2, 1832, the New Jersey legislature gave the Camden and Amboy Railroad the exclusive right to any route across the state that would connect New York and Philadelphia. The C&A's line was from Camden via Bordentown to South Amboy, and by 1860 it had a better-located main line comprising the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad, new construction from Trenton via Princeton to a place called Deans, and the New Jersey Railroad from there via New Brunswick, Elizabeth, and Newark, to the Hudson at Jersey City. This combination, the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Companies, was acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), effective December 1, 1871. [4]
The New Jersey monopoly law was soon to run out, and a rival line, the National Railway, was planned, but the PRR's influence in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey legislatures hindered its development. Pennsylvania's legislature passed a bill on January 29, 1873, changing the name of the Philadelphia & Montgomery County to the Philadelphia, Newtown & New York Railroad Company, and authorizing it to extend its railroad to a bridge to be constructed across the Delaware River. [5] This authorization suggested that a new railroad in New Jersey was contemplated, to continue by some route to the Hudson River. But in that same year, on October 22, the PRR leased the line in order to keep it from the hands of the National.
When the PRR leased the railroad, 6.1 miles (9.8 km) of track had been laid, bringing the line to Fox Chase. By March 1877, the entire 22-mile (35 km) line to Newtown was open as a branch of the Connecting Railway, with equipment furnished by the PRR. [6] But the larger picture had changed by this date. One of the PRR's acquisitions in 1871 was an unbuilt railroad chartered a year earlier to run north from the Delaware River, and the PRR had it up and running by 1873 from Somerset Junction (on its Belvidere Delaware line) to Millstone, where it connected to a PRR branch from East Millstone to New Brunswick. Its location interfered with the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad being built by Philadelphia and Reading Railway interests, because their railroad would now have to cross the PRR's line at some point. This led to the frog war incident at Hopewell, New Jersey, a battle of workmen, soldiers, and lawyers that was won by the Philadelphia and Reading Railway in January 1876. The PRR operated the Newtown and Somerset lines a little longer, but connecting them into a new Philadelphia and New York route would not happen. The Somerset was closed in 1879, and the Newtown line, no longer a danger, was sold to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway-controlled North Pennsylvania Railroad (NPR) the same year. [7]
The branch off the Connecting Railroad was just east of North Penn Junction, curving into the bed of Second Street at Butler Street, and curving off at Duncannon Street to join the present-say Fox Chase line at Olney station. In 1879 the NPR ran in the bed of Third Street, and at first it branched off to the Newtown line by an S-curve in private property over to Second Street, from Erie Ave to Pike Street. By 1895 Philadelphia and Reading Railway passenger services ran from Reading Terminal and reached the Newtown line by the present-day connection parallel and north of Fisher Avenue. [8]
The Philadelphia, Newtown and New York Railroad maintained its existence as a separate corporate entity until 1945, when it and other smaller controlled lines were merged into the Reading Company. Ownership passed to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. Conrail was the designated operator of SEPTA commuter service until 1981. At that time, SEPTA operated the line as the Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line (a spin-off of the City Transit Division's Broad Street Subway) until January 1983, when service was discontinued beyond Fox Chase.
The Reading Company was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail.
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The Mercer and Somerset Railway was a short-lived line of the Pennsylvania Railroad in western New Jersey, built to delay completion of the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad, part of the National Railway line from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New York City.
The Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad was a railroad from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Trenton, New Jersey. Opened in 1832, it became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system in 1871. The majority of it is now part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North American railroads, and among the first common carrier transportation companies whose prospectus marketed an enterprise aimed at carrying passengers fast and competing with stagecoaches between New York Harbor and Philadelphia-Trenton. Among the other earliest chartered or incorporated railroads, only the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were chartered with passenger services in mind. Later, after mergers, the UNJ&CC became a subsidiary part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) system in New Jersey by the later merger and acquisition of several predecessor companies in 1872; these purchases also included the PRR's main line to New York City. Prior to 1872, its main lines were the Camden and Amboy Rail Road and Transportation Company, the first railroad in New Jersey and one of the first railroads in the United States.
The SEPTA Regional Rail system is a commuter rail network owned by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and serving the Philadelphia Metropolitan area. The system has 13 branches and more than 150 active stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, its suburbs and satellite towns and cities. It is the fifth-busiest commuter railroad in the United States, and the busiest outside of the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas. In 2016, the Regional Rail system had an average of 132,000 daily riders and 118,800 daily riders - the last year with reliable data before COVID-19.
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The National Railway or National Air Line Railroad was a planned railroad between New York City and Washington, D.C. in the United States around 1870. Part of it was eventually built from New York to Philadelphia by the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad and the Delaware River Branch of the North Pennsylvania Railroad, leased by the Philadelphia and Reading Railway in 1879 and becoming its New York Branch. The line was intended to provide an alternate to the various monopolies that existed along the route, specifically the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Companies and their Camden and Amboy Railroad, and as such had a long struggle to be built.
Philadelphia was an early railroad hub, with lines from all over meeting in Philadelphia. The first railroad in Philadelphia was the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, opened in 1832 north to Germantown. At the end of 1833, the state-built Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, part of the Main Line of Public Works, opened for travel to the west, built to avoid loss of travel through Pennsylvania due to projects such as the Erie Canal. At the same time, the north-south leg of the Philadelphia City Railroad opened, running south along Broad Street from the Philadelphia and Columbia.
North Broad station, known as North Broad Street until 1992, is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 2601 North Broad Street in the Cecil B. Moore section of Lower North Philadelphia, and serves the Lansdale/Doylestown Line and the Manayunk/Norristown Line. The station has low-level platforms on the outside tracks, with "mini-high" platforms for wheelchair and ADA accessibility.
The North Pennsylvania Railroad was a railroad company which served Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Bucks County and Northampton County in Pennsylvania. It was formed in 1852 and began operation in 1855. The Philadelphia and Reading Railway, predecessor to the Reading Company, leased the North Pennsylvania in 1879. Its tracks were transferred to Conrail and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in 1976.
The Connecting Railway was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, incorporated to build a connection between the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad and the PRR in the city of Philadelphia.
The Trenton Subdivision is a railroad line owned by CSX Transportation in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The line runs from CP PARK in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, northeast to Port Reading Junction in Manville, New Jersey, along a former Reading Company line.
North Philadelphia station is an intercity rail and regional rail station on the Northeast Corridor, located on North Broad Street in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's (SEPTA) Regional Rail Trenton Line and Chestnut Hill West Line account for most of the station's service. Four Amtrak trains – three southbound and one northbound – stop on weekdays only.
The West Trenton Line is a SEPTA Regional Rail service connecting Center City Philadelphia to the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey. With around 12,000 riders every weekday, it is the third busiest line in the SEPTA Regional Rail network.
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The New York Branch or the Bound Brook Route was a railway line in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was operated by the Reading Company and owned by two of its subsidiaries, the North Pennsylvania Railroad and the Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad. It formed part of the Reading's route from Philadelphia to New York City, used by the famed Crusader. The line was transferred to Conrail in 1976 and was split into the Neshaminy Line and Trenton Line. SEPTA continues to operate commuter trains to West Trenton as part of its West Trenton Line.
The Fox Chase Branch, formerly the Newtown Branch, is a railway line in the state of Pennsylvania. It runs 4.9 miles (7.9 km) from a junction with the SEPTA Main Line near Wayne Junction to Fox Chase. At its fullest extent, it continued another fifteen miles north to Newtown. The oldest part of it was built in 1876 by the Philadelphia, Newtown and New York Railroad. It was part of the Reading Company system from 1879 until 1976. Today it is owned by SEPTA and hosts the Fox Chase Line commuter rail service.
The New York Short Line was a railway line in Pennsylvania. It was operated by the Reading Company and built by the New York Short Line Railroad, a subsidiary. It was opened in 1906 to provide a more direct route between Philadelphia and New York City, bypassing the existing route via Jenkintown. The line was conveyed to Conrail in 1976 and is now part of the Trenton Subdivision of CSX.