Two boudoir-format albumen cards by Mumper & Co., Photo Artists, Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania document active railroad construction through blasted rock cuts in the hilly terrain of south-central Pennsylvania. The inscriptions on the reverses identify the subjects as "Cut at Benchoffs" and "Blue Rock Cut," both standard construction designations for sections where rock has been excavated to carry a rail line through rising ground. The freshly laid track, minimal ballast, and active work crews visible in the first view confirm these were made during construction rather than after the line was in operation.

The first card, horizontal in format, looks down into a newly cut passage between a rubble-strewn hillside at left and a sheer rock face at right, with twin rails running through the center toward a valley below. A crew of eight or more workers stands on and beside the track in the middle distance, and a split-rail fence lines the hillside above. Bare deciduous trees and a distant structure are visible on the slope at upper right. The second card, vertical in format, presents a tighter view of a curving single-track cut through a massive exposed rock face, the raw stratified stone filling the right half of the composition and the track sweeping left toward a forested hill in the distance.

The reverses of both cards bear the oval stamp of Mumper & Co., Photo Artists, Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with the respective location inscriptions written in ink above the stamp.