I have been a member of two clubs. One was in CT when I was still in high school. The other was here in central PA after I was married. My experiences were so different, I'll answer your questions twice.
CT club
Do you have monthly or regular meetings? Yes, monthly at a members house to see trains running. Members were encouraged to bring equipment to operate.
Do you have clinics or how-to sessions? Sometimes. Mostly, it was just bull sessions.
Do you meet at members homes and run trains on their layout? Yes, see above.
Do you have work parties at members homes? Not that I was a part of. It is likely this happened later after I had left the area.
Do you have a permanent meeting place? No.
Do you have a club layout? No.
What other things do you do as a club? There were a few train shows we'd set up for. A couple of guys got together and built some modules. I think those guys formed the Central CT G gaugers group.
Central PA
Do you have monthly or regular meetings? No.
Do you have clinics or how-to sessions? No.
Do you meet at members homes and run trains on their layout? They tried to put together an open house circuit, but because it was a general area on the same day, I never got to see the local layouts nor meet the locals who had them.
Do you have work parties at members homes? Not that I was aware of.
Do you have a permanent meeting place? No.
Do you have a club layout? There were display layouts set up at the ECLSTS, PA garden show in Harrisburg, and at a Holdiay Display. If you were unable to help set up during normal business working hours, you were ostracised.
What other things do you do as a club? Eat. They apparently got together in the summer and December for official meetings and to eat.
I moved from CT which is why I left that club. Also, as the youngest member with a layout, I always felt at odds with the older members of the club. I hosted on open house/club meeting, and the day before everything ran great. Day of event, it poured down rain. We managed to run trains later in the afternoon, but overall, it was kind of disappointing. I also attempted to run live steam in December outside at a member's house. Not the best move. Managed to steam up but had a problem with the R/C.
The Central PA club has been a real disappointment. Like Doug says, if there is not a clear goal for the club, it can be frustrating to the membership. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when members didn't seem to want to bring trains to run at the display track for the ECLSTS in 2006. Friends of mine (non club members) who had bought/brought equipment at/to the show were basically run off by the other members who didn't bring anything to run. Last year, I had a member stop me at the show and ask if I was going to join again. I said No. I guess they miss having the variety.
It would be great to have a 'club' layout to go work on, but the truth for me is that I don't have the time for my own layout, let alone a club layout.
While not an actual club, the RR Museum of PA is having Model RR days again this year. I was part of the initial tour last year, and they asked me to be part again this year. I was recently contacted by one of the other layout owners who wanted to see my RR, since we don't get a chance to go around day of the tour. I thought that was pretty cool, and look forward to meeting up with him. There are 8 of us within about 10 miles of each other. I have yet to meet any of them! It was fun to host and chat with over 600 people in a little over 4 hours. My initial figure of 350 was crushed when I got the official report from the RRMofPA indicating that 600 tickets had been sold. While it was overwhelming, and I didn't even run a single train (I had guest engineers), it was a lot of fun. Also, it forced me to ballast the railroad and make sure that everything was running well ahead of time.
Mark