I used balsa and jig cut wood for the crossbeams. I grabbed a chip from the el on Roosevelt ave in queens and then matched the paint. It’s not scale but good enough for me at the time. For the track, I used mostly Kline scale trax with the built in plastic ties since it was cheap and readily available at the time. I used Atlas for the under layout subway.
I roughly based my el's dimensions on this (although mine is nowhere near as detailed since I used wood,not plastruct) - https://www.nycmodeltransit.org/ModelEl.htm