The Presenters

The Biggest Little Railway In The World  was presented by Dick Strawbridge, along with co-presenters Claire Barratt and Hadrian Spooner.

Dick Strawbridge
Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Francis "Dick" Strawbridge, MBE is a British engineer, television presenter and environmentalist. He is well known for taking part in various television programmes, particularly ''Scrapheap Challenge. ''

Dick's career originally started in the British Army, receiving a commission in 1979 and joining the Royal Corps of Signals in 1980. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1999, and left the army in 2001.

Dick took on the role of main presenter and lead engineer of The Biggest Little Railway In The World, providing links to camera and voice-over narration for the show. On location, Dick followed the Track Teams for the first few days of the project. He then followed the Train Team for much of the journey, and drove Silver Lady on several occasions, including (most notably) the first section of the railway between Corpach and the Neptune's Staircase Train Ferry.

Claire Barratt
Claire Barratt is an English industrial archaeologist, steam engineer and television presenter. She studied civil engineering at the University of Portsmouth, and whilst doing so, became interested in mechanical engineering.

Claire's First Television appearance was on Channel 4's Salvage Squad – a programme about restoring historical machinery. She initially appeared on the programme as a participant, but later became a co-presenter.

Claire's was head of the Special Build Team in The Biggest Little Railway In The World, and lead the design and construction of projects to overcome four of the railway's main obstacles.

Hadrian Spooner
Hadrian Spooner is an engineer and director of HMS Engineering (Hereford) Ltd, an engineering consultancy firm. HMS Engineering's previous work for television includes Scrapheap Challenge, Top Gear, Scrappy Racers, Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections, Tricked and Driving Wild.

Hadrian was responsible for designing the track used to construct the railway for The Biggest Little Railway In The World. He also supervised the track laying teams with their engineering challenges.

Hadrian was a controversial figure in the programme. He was particularly critical of Team C and their leader, Paul. During Episode 2, part of a discussion between Paul and Hadrian was aired, in which Paul refused to make his team work on a faulty track section before they had eaten lunch. This was due to Paul's concern about the health needs of his team, which included several people who were diabetic. This incident became known by some of the participants as "lunch-gate".