50 Pesos First Spanish Railroad, Piedfort

Cuba's first railroad, inaugurated in November 1837, predates Spain's own first domestic rail line by nearly a decade — a fact that embarrassed metropolitan officials at the time and has been a point of Cuban pride ever since. The Havana-to-Güines line was financed largely by sugar plantation owners who needed faster routes to port, not by colonial administrators.

Piedfort issues from the Banco Nacional's 1989 program were struck at double the standard planchet thickness and distributed primarily through European numismatic channels, as U.S. embargo restrictions had long since cut off the obvious collector market.