All about us

How it all began...

The club began from sad circumstances, the layout shown in the photo below was the work of one Okehampton man, who sadly passed away. As the unit was rented and no buyer could be found for the layout it was set to be dismantled, stock sold off and the layout ultimately lost. This is when a group of friends from the Exeter area led by Louis Denning stepped in and offered to take over all the ongoing costs in return for saving the layout itself (stock was not included). This offer was accepted and shortly after to help meet the ongoing costs Exeter Junction Model Railway Club was formed as an informal group of friends to run and operate the layout. The club name arose from the name of the layout.

Where we are today...

So today the club has grown and transformed beyond all expectations. Following on from the ethos of saving the first layout that created the club, we quickly became known as a group that would save other layouts facing destruction and have now grown to have 10+ layouts in various stages of development. Full information on all of these can be found in our Layouts section.

With the influx of rescued layouts we have outgrown the initial room and have now taken on an additional large unit within the same industrial estate where the bulk of our layouts are now found. In addition to the rescued layouts we also have layouts created and built by individual members and we are working on a brand new layout for us to truly call our own work.

Our members range in age from 16-81, some with limited modelling experience and some with decades. Some members are very much into the modelling aspect, others just like to run trains, as an informal group/club all members are free to concentrate on which aspect of the hobby appeals most to them, and everyone is given the opportunity to add personal touches to any of the club layouts.

In 2025 we took on our biggest project yet and ran Okehampton's first ever full size model railway show, and feedback has been overwhelmingly great from both visitors and exhibitors, to the point where a show will now become a regular feature on our events calendar.

Following on from the feedback received, one common theme was that most people didn't realise there was a club in Okehampton, with most thinking that because of the name, the club was located in Exeter. So in August 2025 we have renamed ourselves 'Okehampton Model Railway Club' to make things nice and clear, and our website was born in order to increase our web presence and get the word out about who we are, what we do and share what we get up to.

In addition to the modelling side of things, club members often organise trips out to other clubs/events/model shows/steam and diesel galas plus other non railway events too, so there is a great social aspect to our club beyond the shared joy of model railways.