20 Pesos First Railroad in England

Cuba's hard-currency commemorative program of the 1980s was explicitly designed to generate foreign exchange, not domestic circulation — these pieces were sold abroad through state trading companies while Cubans used pesos they could never legally exchange. The series drew on themes deliberately chosen to appeal to European collectors, which explains the otherwise puzzling decision to commemorate British railway history on a Cuban coin.

The Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in September 1825, though it relied on horse traction for much of its early freight work alongside Stephenson's locomotive.