About Exeter Gauge O Group
32 years old in 2025
A rather grainy picture of Hope Hall taken in 2003. Jim Harries at extreme right.
The Exeter Gauge O Group (EXEGOG for short) exists to cater for modellers in Mid & East Devon, South Somerset and West Dorset, working in or around 7mm to one foot scale, whatever the gauge. Our members have a wide and diverse range of prototype and modelling interests and skills, and at the last count we had people working in SIX different gauges! Geographically the group covers a very wide area, with our members travelling from South and East Devon, Somerset and West Dorset.
We meet at The Victory Hall in the village of Whimple just east of Exeter, (close to the M5 and A30/303 dual carriageway) usually on the first and third Thursday evenings of the month. Please contact us or check the diary pages before coming, to confirm what is happening.
We have a large test track facility available at most meetings, with a circuit of approximately 22 metres. This offers not only 32mm gauge but also 14mm and 16.5mm circuits for running - ideal for those with limited running facilities at home. Both DCC and DC control facilities are available. Standard gauge trackwork is all out-of-the-box Peco.
A few years ago we acquired Wedmore, which is an end to end country station layout kept on site at Whimple with our test track, and this is put up regularly for members to play trains. Members have significantly upgraded many facets of this lovely 1990s layout, including electrics, scenery and signalling. In September 2023 it made its first revamped appearance at Guildex, and is now frequently to be seen at exhibitions around the Westcountry. As I write this (January 2025) we're in the process of redesigning and extending the right-hand end of the layout. Two new boards have been built to replace the previous end board, and this will give us significantly improved operating potential at the terminus end of the layout.
Also on Club nights we hold occasional modelling “Clinics” on various subjects, for developing skills and sorting out that difficult kit, and members often use meeting time for practical modelling activities. Regular annual events include the Modelling Competition, Bring & Buy sale, Christmas Meal etc. Meetings sometimes conclude with a visit to the nearby village pub, The Thirsty Farmer, which is at least 50 yards away. In addition we have a portable display stand which we use to “fly the flag” at local Exhibitions.
Paul Holwill (of N-gauge 'Moorsview' fame) operating the club layout, Wedmore at Guildex in 2023
A Brief History of EXEGOG...
The group was founded in the early 1990s, and for several years met in a repurposed Baptist Chapel just east of the city centre, owned by Devon County Council and operated as a community hall. This was moderately satisfactory but the hall was cold and damp, and we had to clear everything away after each session. Things came to a head when a member of a local karate club - fellow users of the facility - put his foot through the floor into the total immersion baptism tank. At this point DCC decided that continued ownership of the hall was no longer viable so closed it down and put the building on the market. Meantime we decamped to Burnthouse Lane in Exeter to another church hall, this time behind eight foot high fencing and an address that made the local law quail.
Enter retired dentist and long-term philanthropic club member Jim Harries, who unbeknown to the membership quietly purchased the hall from DCC and handed it to us for us to play trains to our hearts' delight and on a peppercorn rent. He had the place rewired, new heating and plumbing systems put in, and we redecorated it. Here we had a large dedicated layout space, a snug with library, kitchen facilities etc. We had unfettered access to the building, and steadily built up a permanent round-and-round layout about 28' x 20' with one side broadly modelled on the GW main line at Dawlish Warren. Mention must be made of the late David Goddard, ex-Reuters editor-in-chief in the Middle East, who drove the layout building with comments like "We can get another couple of sidings in there!". The heading photo on this page shows an evening in Hope Hall in full flow. The hall is occupied by the layout, and behind it can be seen the kitchen on the right and the 'snug'/library on the left. In our early days in the hall our test track had to be stored on the roof of the snug and kitchen areas - the ladder access can just be seen. At the time of this photo some 4mm friends of Jim occupied the platform for their layout.
Sadly Jim died in 2010 and we had to vacate the hall the following year.
After a short spell of casting around for an alternative venue we found the Victory Hall in Whimple, a few miles east of Exeter. This has good access all round, parking and a pub a stone's throw away. The hall is a community resource, so we couldn't have a permanent layout. However, there was storage in a garage outside. Initially we were very kindly loaned a test track from Yeovil MRG, thanks to the offices of the late Bob Alderman, a member of both groups at the time. Since that time we've built a new oval test track of our own which gets an airing at almost every meeting, and acquired a fully-scenic layout which we are upgrading and extending. This was Wedmore, originally built by Trevor Gibson, but through a quirk of circumstance and the sad and untimely death of one of our members ended up in our hands. We've also been fortunate that in 2024 the hall installed a shipping container which we can now use for storage of both the test track and the layout. You can follow the development of Wedmore on the 'News' page link above.
