In the mid-1950s, in the waning days of steam on the New York Central, Trains Magazine Editor David P. Morgan and his friend, the accomplished photographer Philip R. Hastings, had a memorable encounter with a NYC Class L-3a 4-8-2 Mohawk in Shelby, Ohio. The Mohawk had seen better days and was assigned to a lowly mixed freight nearly 100 cars long. Just another worn-out steam engine limping painfully along with a long, heavy freight. What happened that day stunned Morgan and Hastings and resulted in one of the finest articles to appear in Trains, “The Mohawk that refused to abdicate” from the September 1956 issue.
