Newtown Station is a defunct railroad station in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Built by the

Reading Railroad The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and freight transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states from 1924 until its acquisition by Conrail in 1976. Commonly called the Reading Railr ...

, it later served

SEPTA Regional Rail The SEPTA Regional Rail system is a commuter rail network owned by SEPTA and serving the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The system has 13 branches and more than 150 active stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, its suburbs and satellite town ...

's Fox Chase/Newtown Line.

SEPTA SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, is a regional public transportation authority that operates bus, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and electric trolleybus services for nearly four million people througho ...

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

's Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line. The station, and all of those north of Fox Chase station, 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 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 busine ...

. 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 or import tax is a duty imposed by a national government, customs territory, or supranational union on imports of goods and is paid by the importer. Exceptionally, an export tax may be levied on exports of goods or raw materials and is ...

. 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 travelling ...

, 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
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Newtown (Septa Station) Railway stations in the United States opened in 1878 Former SEPTA Regional Rail stations Former Reading Company stations Former railway stations in Bucks County, Pennsylvania Railway stations in the United States closed in 1983 1878 establishments in Pennsylvania