Sparks are Flying in Loco Town

Our last performance as Hanby and Barrett took place across five locations – both indoors and out – across Netherfield and absolutely filled the streets.

‘Our play today – as you can see – is a potboiler, a steaming Netherfield one. And it’s a potboiler because it tells of a feud that runs across one hundred years – roughly the lifetime of the Colwick Loco – between two families, the Ivatts and the Gresleys (some of you will pick up on these locomotive names). Just about everything you hear in the play has either come from books written by local historians, especially Barrie Waite, or from talking to ex railway workers and their families. We didn’t find any evidence of a feud by the way, rather the opposite; a community linked by a common endeavour; where husbands worked all hours whilst their wives and children washed, worried and tiptoed around them as they slept through the afternoon ready for an evening shift. It was a profession that defined Netherfield; and hearing how it all worked, how you moved up the footplate, how you worked as a team in the cab to keep the engines steaming along the tracks, has been fascinating. We hope you enjoy our potboiler, which tries to tell of the history of the Loco and of Netherfield itself. And which also, more importantly, tries to dig into the heart of what it means to be a railway town.’