Tabak Rudy

Article by Roxanne Delage
Seaway News
April 8, 2010

Model trains had been a passion for Rudy Tabak since he was a boy, he says, and although he got side tracked as an adult, now sober for fifteen years, he’s back in the conductor’s seat.

More than just toy trains on a track, Tabak has made an art of the medium with his carefully detailed to-scale model reproductions. Creating from scratch, whether he’s using the ink reservoir from a pen for a pipeline or hydro pole, or the motor and gears from a discarded VCR to automate a feature, his imagination is endless. “I see things in a different light,” he says, and whatever he can get his hands on, he will use. “I’m really into modules,” says Tabak, who travels regularly throughout Ontario, Quebec and the United States with his portable set-up to display his work at hobby shows, museums and charity functions, among others. His largest set up to date, 28’ x 43’ he says was assembled in Giannou three years ago where he pulled 105 boxcars with one engine, “Big Boy,” he calls the engine. “Every engine has a name.”

Some of Tabak’s work, in fact, has been for high profile clients including the Science and Technology Museum where he created a layout depicting Roger’s Pass, as well as a small scale outdoor reproduction of the ball diamond in the movie Field of Dreams, created for the talent scout for the NY Mets.

He is also regular exhibitor at the Canadian Railway Museum, and will next be set up at the Long Sault Home Show on April 30 and May 1.

You could certainly say, it was meant to be when Tabak met his common-law wife, Marie, six years ago, at an event where she was displaying her miniature village collection - the largest in Canada, no less. Together, the couple has 118 collections with a total 30,000 items.

Among those, Tabak is into all things pewter and copper, as well at Dutch Delft Blue pottery. He also proudly boasts having the largest die-cast toy collection in Eastern Ontario. “It’s never too late to have a good childhood,” he laughs.