The collection primarily consists of black and white photographs and negatives of steam locomotives from a variety of railroads, but it includes some other rolling stock, station photos, related railroad items such as coaling stations and some street railroads, interurbans, and trolley images. In addition, from The Baldwin Locomotive Works there are locomotive information cards with all the specifications printed on the reverse of the photograph; the oldest negative number is 887 (undated) and the latest, negative number 12,971, was built in 1945. The earliest items in the Cope collection are 4x5 glass plate negatives generally unidentified of locomotives, many on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia.

The railroads (chiefly steam locomotives) represented the most prominantly are the Louisville & Nashville, Pennsylvania Railroad, Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, and the Western Maryland Railway Company. An interesting inclusion is photographs of the Baldwin 60000 locomotive entering the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1933. In addition to railroad related images, there are twenty-six lantern slides documenting the construction of the Panama Canal distributed by C. T. Milligan firm of Philadelphia.

Cope also photographed and collected 35mm color slides of his subjects. The color slides are an important component of the collection and date predominantly from the 1970s. Subjects include views from Cope's trips to Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Canada, Denmark, Sweden; views of Amtrak, Conrail, Penn Central, Septa lines mostly in S.E. Pennsylvania; locomotives, railroad cars, stations, towers and trestles, railroad bridges; Paoli and Wilmington shops; some street railroads, interurbans and trolleys; Octoraro Railway images.