Corporate graffiti! Kidding - sort of, lol. Nice catch, Doug.
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Neat! I have never seen an SD45 with the EMD extended cab; I've only ever seen the Geeps which were made this way for the P-RSL (like the one in photo #313568).
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It absolutely was corporate graffiti! Conrail did its best to put its brand on all locomotives, especially road power, and eradicate all traces of predecessor roads. Although it took a long time for Conrail to develop a paint scheme, there was no hesitancy to wipe out all traces of legacy identification. Crew members have told me that they were not allowed to wear clothing with predecessor road logos, under the premise that seniority inequalities between former employees would fester into arguments on the job. Other than a small part of the L&HR scheme, I can't think of any blue on any predecessor locos, and I believe that this mentality contributed to Conrail's selection of blue as their standard.
When a lot of the Reading (and other) lettering was painted over, it was done in black. At least the "graffiti" on this unit was color-matched.
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It actually looks like the cab door and engineer's side window are "pushed in," as opposed to the center cab windows and number boards being "pushed out;" note how the cab roof and side wall both seem to extend to the same point as the number boards, with a little "roof overhang" visible. Neat spotting feature for RDG SD45s!
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The Reading SD45s were equipped with extended cabs because Reading ordered them with dual control stands.
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