Philadelphia, Newtown and New York Railroad

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.

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.

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 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.

[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.