The photo is mislabeled. It was actually taken on the SOUTH side of Chicago and not the north side.
The location is the former Erman-Howell scrapyard off 83rd Street on the South Side. In the background is the Commonwealth Edison State Line power plant in Hammond, just across the Illinois border.
This particular locomotive, SW1 877, was sold for scrap to Erman-Howell in December of 1982 by the Milwaukee Road so it could not have been in service in 1984 on the Milwaukee Road. Erman-Howell apparently used it for its own in-house operations prior to scrapping it.
Research collaboration with Doug Kaniuk.
