In the past, I’ve used all different kinds of methods and materials in making railroad crossings. I discovered the easiest and fastest way of doing this is by using a piece of duck tape. As crude and as redneck as this may sound, it has proven to work very well.
What I do is stretch a piece of duck tape across the rails and then press the ends down on the board. I then take a very sharp exacto blade and cut the tape along the outside of the rails. I then pull the area of tape between the two cuts off… I then lay a skinny piece between the rails and trim the ends to match the width of the tape I first layed. I then spray paint the tape with a can of dark gray vinyl spray paint. Any other type of paint will flake off of the duck tape.I then mix some acrylic water base paint to match the color of the spray paint and paint the rest of the existing road.
When it’s all dry, where the ends of the duck tape meet the road becomes virtually invisible. The paint that is on the rails, comes off easily with a track erasor. I then use 1/8 in yellow striping tape to simulate the center lines in the road. The end result looks very real. I did this 3 months ago and the duck tape has never come up.