of the Connecting Railway, with equipment furnished by the PRR. 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. 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. Mergers and succession 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. References Defunct Pennsylvania railroads Predecessors of the Reading Company Railway companies established in 1860