gitrplaya5u wrote:wat is the use of the lever above and to the right of the throttle of some older units?
and also what is the thing to the left of this lever?
That's a selector lever, Zack. It's use is selection of power or dynamic braking function of the throttle handle. On these earlier models, the throttle controlled the power operation
and the dynamic brakes.
The object to left of it on the first photo was a little window that indicated which position the throttle was in -- numbered 1 to 8. In power, there are 8 separate notches, while in DB, the lever moves smoothly across the numbers up to full braking at 8.
The second photo has different indicator that shows either Power, Off (locked), or Brake. There was a separate indicator for handle position just like the one above.
After a nasty fatal accident with an EMD unit in control of a train heading down a steep grade (where they surmised that the engineer who died in the wreck thought he was in braking but was actually in full power) a new standard control stand was designed that had two separate handles. One handle was a throttle for power that was pulled back to operate, and one for braking that was pushed forward for operation of DB.
Also, the load meter was changed to indicate power and braking in two directions on the face of the meter -- forward for motoring, and back for braking.
On earlier (pre -2) EMDs, the selector lever also had an OFF position where the throttle was locked. The second photo looks like one of those. The first photo is a -2 model of some sort, I believe.
I have also seen some even older models on which the selector also selected the transition level -- 1, 2, 3, 4. I'm not sure, but perhaps this was a manual transition system.(?)