I know how to get rid of the props at crossings now and I also know how to make the railroad and the stations better. I will update several of these assets soon, time permitting.

There's a mod called Advanced Vehicle Selector or something like that -- if you use it you can control which vehicles spawn and you can make this spawn as a "caravan" cargo train. I made one map using a special set of "tracks" that look just like a gravel road (there are rr signs and gates at crossings which I could not get rid of) so you can use that instead of a RR track. Likewise I made "stations" that do not look like train stations.

This is just a part of a train. The engine is a horse.

I don't understand how this works. Is it a car ON a train, or if I enable this, is this THE train?