Newtown station is a defunct railroad station in

Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania Newtown is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 2,248 at the 2010 census. It is located just west of the Trenton, New Jersey metropolitan area, and is part of the larger Philadelphia metropolitan area. It ...

. Built by the

Reading Railroad 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. Commonly call ...

, it later served

SEPTA Regional Rail 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 Philadelp ...

's Fox Chase/Newtown Line.

SEPTA The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is a regional public transportation authority that operates bus, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and electric trolleybus services for nearly 4 million people in five c ...

closed the station in 1983.

History

built the station in 1873 as the terminus of its line. In the railroad's original plans, the line was to continue to the north, but this expansion was never built. The building was torn down in 1960, and a new shelter was constructed in 1976. It later became a part of

Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line The Fox Chase Line SEPTA Regional Rail service connecting Center City Philadelphia with Fox Chase. It uses the Fox Chase Branch, which branches off from the SEPTA Main Line at Newtown Junction north of the Wayne Junction station. It runs entirel ...

. The station, and all of those north of

Fox Chase station Fox Chase station is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Located near the intersection of Rhawn Street and Rockwell Avenue in the Fox Chase neighborhood, it is the current terminus of the Fox Chase Line. Fox Chase stati ...

, was closed on January 18, 1983 due to failing diesel train equipment. SEPTA experimented with the line by operating the Fox Chase-Newtown diesel segment as the Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line. SEPTA insisted on utilizing transit operators from the

Broad Street Subway The Broad Street Line (BSL), also known as the Broad Street subway (BSS), Orange Line, or Broad Line, is a subway line owned by the city of Philadelphia and operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The line ru ...

as a cost-saving factor, while Conrail requested that railroad engineers run the service. This was a result of a labor dispute that began when SEPTA inherited approximately 1,700 displaced employees from

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do bus ...

. When a federal court ruled that SEPTA had to use Conrail employees in order to offer job assurance, SEPTA cancelled Fox Chase-Newtown trains. Service in the diesel-only territory north of Fox Chase was cancelled at that time, and the Newtown station still appears in publicly posted

tariffs A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and po ...

. Although rail service was initially replaced with a Fox Chase-Newtown

shuttle bus A shuttle bus is a bus that travels a shorter route in comparison to most bus routes. Typically, shuttle buses travel in both directions between two points. Shuttle buses are designed to transport large groups of people who are all travellin ...

, patronage remained light, and the Fox Chase-Newtown shuttle bus service ended in 1999. The Newtown station shelter was torn down in 2004.Bucks Views website, documenting out-of-service Newtown train line
/ref>

References

External links

Newtown Line.pa-tec.org – PA-TEC study on resuming SEPTA commuter service between Fox Chase and Newtown
{{DEFAULTSORT:Newtown (Septa Station) Railway stations in the United States opened in 1873 Railway stations closed in 1983 Former SEPTA Regional Rail stations Former Reading Company stations Former railway stations in Bucks County, Pennsylvania