SSaL,
I'll give you my take on what we are looking at. YMMV!!
The motor is the little guy that pulls the elevator door open and closed. It has a few "limit switches" close to the shaft where the coloured cams are that tell the controls when to stop and start the motor. The switches might have small silver contacts in them. When you first said "elevator" and "motor" I was hoping you got the main motor. But they are about 15 hp and weigh several hundred pounds. You woulda had a point sticking out your backside when trying to pick it up!
The short panel looks like you got one, maybe two transformers bolted to the backpan. The gray box beside the transformer--I'm not sure what it is. Maybe a transformer, maybe a capacitor....?
The big panel - I'm looking at the second from last picture--has a terminal strip across the top where all the wires are connected to. They will be copper (Maybe brass) terminals. The long cylindrical things on the left are power resistors--they are wrapped with something like nichrome wire-kinda like an electric stove element. The thing to the right of the power resistors with the white plastic face looks like a heavy duty relay of some sort--it'll have some silver contacts in it that may be a little bigger than normal. Near the bottom of the photo, there's another transformer and to the right of it looks like a very old style rectifier setup--I believe they called them "selenium rectifiers". '40's or '50's electronics.
The bottom of the box, pictured with a whole bunch of those clear plastic enclosed relays, is an old panel called a "relay logic" panel. It is what they used before they had computers to do the same job in a lot smaller size. All the relays are is a little copper coil and some bits of copper with (maybe) some very small silver contacts. But there will be a shztload of the contacts if you want to go after them. There will be a half dozen in each relay.
I don't think you have a ton of value there--the elevator boys already snagged the stuff that's worth the money--all the elevator electrical cable, the big winch/motor assembly and the power electrics that ran the winch motor. I'll betcha they stopped off at the scrapyard on the way home!
No hidden gold, but some solid material.
The one suggestion I have is to have a look at the two electrical boxes you have and see if they can be repurposed into cupboards in your shop. Plug the holes, put plywood shelves in them and you have a pretty decent metal cupboard with a lockable door.
Or see if you can sell them on Craigs as used electrical boxes. If you're going to try to sell them, though, keep the back pan with the box. And if there is a makers label in the box with a "UL" rating on it, don't scratch it off. That makes it more legal for those who need to worry about that kind of stuff. That big box, bought new, is probably a few hundred $. And if it was a gasketted box, with a little heavier latches, it would be over a grand.
Hope this helps!!
Jon.
EDIT: Took a long time to make this post, noticed when I posted it you had mentioned there might be more there under the tile garbage. Poke around some more...maybe the guys tossed the elevator electrical cabling in there, too. It usually is a multi-conductor cable with a steel cable for a core that takes the weight of all the copper cabling. It runs from the building to the elevator car and moves with the car. Heavy but lots of copper in it.
J.
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