The main purpose of what appears to be a second set of cab windows behind the side door is to allow natural light to illuminate the steps and the engine control panel during daylight. The BL2, like E-units and F-units, had a raised cab floor. Thus, there was a set of steps inside the engine room, right behind the rear cab doors. Any need to do something in the engine room while running was usually taken care of right there where the engine control panel was located, thus more light would be desirable. That window served the same purpose as the front porthole of an F7 or an E8. I believe the engine room doors on both sides of the cab as-built, had a glass window to look through to the rear windshield (which originally had two tandem overlapping windshield wipers with one directly driven by the shaft of the Sprague 'Air-Push' 90 degree wiper motor and the other driven by a connecting rod). In the photo of the rear windshield in this thread, the connecting rod and second wiper have been removed, but you can still see the stubby crank that drove the linkage. The rear windshield was actually in the engine room, not in the cab.
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