As you say, pure speculation, but without a swing it would not work for anything other than picking up something along side the track. If it was doing this while loaded on a car, the object being picked would have to withstand being slammed against the side of the car being loaded, but if used as a slide-back it would work for picking up rails along side the track. It seems unlikely they would build a machine just for this, but they did not spend a great amount of money on it and they had a lot of rail to pick up. For picking something like a building it would have to be placed perpendicular to the track, which would take longer that the actual pick.