From stalwart little locomotives of topographic necessity to the maverick engines of one man's whimsy Britain's narrow-gauge steam trains run on tracks a world apart from its regimented mainlines In Small Island by Little Train eccentricity enthusiast Chris Arnot sets out to discover their stories Stories include miniature railway on the Kent coast used for Home Guard military trains during World War II & now the school commute for dozens of local school children The UK's only Alpine-style rack-&-pinion railway scaling one of Britain's highest mountains The five different gauges of railway circling one man's landscaped garden & the team building their own trains to run on it Far more than mere relics of the nation's industrial past or battered veterans of wartime Britain these are also stories of epic feats of preservation volunteerism tourism & local history They are an exploration of idiosyncrasy enthusiasm & eccentricity Or to put it another way a tale of Britishness