The collection consists of graphic materials relating to the Reading Company and its predecessor, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company. Over one third of the collection is made up of photographs of the Reading Locomotive Shop, taken in April, 1976, at the time of its closing. These images feature machinery, parts, office equipment, and trailers which had not yet been removed from the Reading Shop and the surrounding area. A number of other structures owned by the Reading Comany are also featured in the collection, including images of more than ninety stations, several YMCA buildings and the Reading Company Diesel Facilities in Rutherford, Pennsylvania. Trains are included incidentally in many of these photographs, but a number of photographs feature specific locomotives and rolling stock, especially interior images of newly built passenger and freight cars. Locomotives and rolling stock are also prominently featured in a series of accident images, including photographs of train derailments and the aftermath of collisions.

Portraits and more casual photographs of presidents of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, later the Reading Company, make up a final large portion of the collection. The majority of the more casual images feature Joseph A. Fisher, Reading Company President from 1951 to 1960, posing with unidentified groups. Two images feature Fisher with then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. A number of miscellaneous images round out the collection, including photographs taken at Annual Meetings from 1958 to 1964, construction and interior photographs of One Reading Center in Philadelphia, and engineering drawings of an ash pit and the inclined plane at Gordon, Pennsylvania.

These images represent only a fragment of the Reading Company's activities and property holdings during this period. The company's photo archive has been lost or scattered through dispersal.