PHP - how to create a newline character

Question

I am working on creating a newline character:

echo $clientid;
echo ' ';
echo $lastname;
echo ' ';
echo '\r\n';

Then I open the created file in Notepad and it writes the newline literally:

1 John Doe\r\n 1 John Doe\r\n 1 John Doe\r\n

I have tried many variations of the \r\n, but none work. Why isn't the newline turning into a new line?