All Aboard!

Are you a model-train enthusiast?

A fan of the real thing?

Either way, Camden County College's Blackwood campus is the place for you to be this Thursday.

An operating model-train exhibit and memorabilia display will combine with a documentary about a historic train during an afternoon and evening event inside the college's Connector building.

The South Jersey Railroad Display Club is providing the exhibit and display that will complement the screening of De Luxe: The Tale of the Blue Comet, a film about the legendary Central Railroad of New Jersey train.

The Connector's atrium will hold scale models of the Blue Comet train, a modular layout of the Atlantic City Line, a tabletop display of Lionel trains and a Garden Rail display of trains operating around the exhibits at floor level from noon to 6:30 p.m.

At 7 p.m., Camden County College alum and filmmaker Robert A. Emmons Jr. will screen his "De Luxe" documentary in the Connector's Civic Hall auditorium.

The Blue Comet, known for its distinctive locomotive and blue-and-cream passenger cars, ran from New York to Atlantic City from 1929 to 1941 on the Central Railroad. It was the fashionable mode of travel to Atlantic City and other Jersey Shore destinations in its day, and became one of the most popular of the Lionel model-train line.

The Blue Comet crashed just outside of Chatsworth, in Burlington County, in August 1939 after heavy rainfall washed the ground out from underneath the train tracks. Reports indicate 32 people were injured in the crash.

Emmons, who teaches at Rutgers-Camden, where he is also associate director of the Honors College, will take questions from the audience at the film's conclusion.

Emmons' films include Yardsale! and Wolf at the Door.

The daylong event is being hosted by the college's Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility.

For additional information about the event or to attend, contact the Camden County College Center for Civic Leadership and Responsibility by telephone at 856-227-7200 ext. 4333, via e-mail at CLCRregistrations@camdencc.edu or online at camdencc.edu.