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. History The first effort to build a railroad to Newtown was incorporated as the Bristol and Newtown railroad company in 1836. 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. The Pennsylvania and the National Railway 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. 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. 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. Building the line When the PRR leased the railroad, of track had been laid, bringing the line to Fox Chase. By March 1877, the entire line to Newtown was open as a branch