The four foot long diagonal lever to the right on the passenger car platform would be a cut lever for an earlier Miller Coupler. The coupler has been retrofitted with a slotted Miller Knuckle for compatibility with MCB (Janney) and link and pin couplings, per DepotHacks post below.

Turn of the century (1900) railroad rolling stock had a unique feature that shows up pretty well in this old Chicago photo. Viewed "full size", a little horizontal slot is visible in the knuckle portions of the two drawbars of the steam engine tender and the old passenger coach. The reason for that slot was to enable coupling up the new and more modern coupling equipment (Janney Coupler) to the old "link & pin" equipped cars that still existed until such equipment was finally phased out sometime around World War Two. Trainmen would guide the link into the "slot" in the knuckle, and then drop a pin into the hollow knuckle and thru' the old style link to make the joint. This obviously allowed trains to be made up of mixtures of the old and the new, until all the old link & pin style were gone by some time in the '50's. I really like photos that show old railroad equipment like this one!

We were here earlier to see the bridge raised - Gangway for Andy: 1900.

One in 2008, one in 2014, one in 2018. How many more of these shots are out there?
https://www.shorpy.com/node/4352
https://www.shorpy.com/node/17436