The Wayne Weiss Collection

Many readers of these pages will know the name 'Wayne Weiss', an American with an obsession with 'Steam in Cuba' and whose pictures are scattered through the Zafra feature on this website. Below is an email which I received in August 2026 from Wes Pfarmer, photo-archivist for the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. It sets out plans for the future of Wayne's immense collection. which will undoubtedly be of general interest. A web access address is included, but should you wish to contact Wes, please send me an email which I will then forward - I wouldn't want to be responsible for inflicting a deluge of spam on him.

"Hello Mr. Dickinson -- I am Wes Pfarner, photo-archivist for the Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. This missive is intended to announce the availability of Wayne Weiss's collection of color sides from Cuba in the 1980s and 1990s showing the wide variety of steam locomotives in service to the Cuban sugar mills.

I believe that you are familiar with Mr. Weiss as several of his photos appear in your digital offerings. You seem to be one of the more knowledgeable people involved in Cuban railroad documentation so that is why I am contacting you.

As Mr. Weiss passed away in the spring of 2025, he bequeathed his mass of slides to the Friends organization. Following physical transfer of the slides from his Salida, Colorado residence to our offices, I have scanned all of them and now have 4,000 dpi digital images of some 11,600 Kodachromes. There are many duplicate or near-duplicate images resulting in likely some 3,000 to 5,000 images that will eventually be posted on-line.

My efforts will be directed to making these images available on the internet at ngtrainpics.photoshelter.com for all to enjoy. There is no fee for merely looking but there are options to purchase personal copies for less than $5.00 USD. The title will be "Weiss Collection", reached under the "Collections" tab.

The plan, at present, is to post photos of steam locomotives in MINAZ number order in groups of hundreds (i.e. 1100, 1200, etc.) resulting in nine groupings of engines. On-line information from other sources has generally been ordered by either mill or province, so this may provide a more direct path for those interested in a particular locomotive or grouping of such. A preliminary estimate is that each group will be of at least 200-300 images, some larger. They are arranged in MINAZ number order and then by date, with no real indexing, but the PhotoShelter hosting software will allow searching by engine number and
other criteria embedded within the image. 

I intend to provide full bibliographical information for my sources such as yourself, Mr. Coombs and Mr. Leach whose publications have been primary for my otherwise uninformed notations.

Mr. Weiss did not leave behind any diaries, trip logs or other notes concerning his Cuban excursions. A rare occurrence is that of a date written on a slide mount. Therefore, I have been reduced to dating each photo by the Zafra year as indicated by the Kodak processing marks, an uncertain method.. Locations are usually unknown to me, but as the focus is on the locomotives and not operations, they become of lesser importance.

I have the 1100-series engines online now and the remainder following as soon as I can accomplish it. I would desire some feedback from knowledgeable people such as yourself. There undoubtedly will be errors of both omission and commission so some assistance could be valuable.

Cuba Libre!, Wes"