In this study, we consider stationary waiting times in a Poisson driven single-server m-node queues in series. We assume that service times at nodes are independent, and are either deterministic or non-overlapped. Each node excluding the first node has a finite waiting line and every node is operated under a FIFO service discipline and a communication blocking policy (blocking before service). By applying (max, +)-algebra to a corresponding stochastic event graph, a special case of timed Petri nets, we derive the explicit expressions for stationary waiting times at all areas, which are functions of finite buffer capacities. These expressions allow us to compute the performance measures of interest such as mean, higher moments, or tail probability of waiting time. Moreover, as applications of these results, we introduce optimization problems which determine either the biggest arrival rate or the smallest buffer capacities satisfying probabilistic constraints on waiting times. These results can be also applied to bounds of waiting times in more general systems. Numerical examples are also provided.