Cantilevers

Can't you leave them alone?

Cantilevers tend to shadow the highway, road, or whatever it is below them. They can allow drivers to see the railroad crossing even if they aren't right next to the crossing, to know it is on.

There is an end cantilever, a middle cantilever, and a lights cantilever. Each can be any combination above the road, so long as redstone is on top of the light ones and connects to a cantilever ending with a bell on top of it, and that all that stuff connects to some sort of vertical redstone component below itself, to some redstone dust powered relay (like the crossing gate block or vertical redstone itself).

The cantilever middle and end parts do nothing except support blocks like redstone and torches, and just look nice. They can also be walked through like a catwalk, so place the block with direction in mind.

The cantilever lights support the same functionality as the Railroad Crossing Lights block, but can also be directional north-south/east-west as well, which automatically rotates the lights model towards that direction for you. Note that the model for the lights is separate from the model for the cantilever itself, but they are both entity models (they are technically one model with 2 parts [6 if you count individual lights], but who's counting).