In March 2023, Steve Sweeney had a Conrail 1980s HO scale layout discussion with Dave Abeles. In total, Dave talks about Conrail, Penn Central, New York Central, Pennsylvania, and other railroads and how Conrail became a time of optimism for railroading, especially in the Northeast and Midwest states that once saw a multitude of bankruptcies and track abandonments.
Dave shows off an intermodal train in action and also share his philosophy of modeling including what changes he made to a model railroad to make it period and place specific for Conrail in Upstate New York.

This was fantastic, thanks for sharing your backstory and philosophy, along with some history and a layout tour! I think we got an economics lesson along the way too. I’d love to see another one of these videos in the future.
Happy Conrail Day! Thanks for sharing this with all of us, Dave!
I hope to see more interviews of model railroaders! Thank you Steve and Dave!