I am a locomotive engineer, and while my employer (who pays me handsomely) would not be fond of me to discuss operational matters in great detail, I do feel compelled to point out a few things.
Converting road to rail, as in Interstate highway, would be very, very, VERY time and labor-intensive. The rails are clipped to concrete ties (in more modern times) or spiked into wooden ties (old-school)...but you need to have a solid foundation for the ties. One would have to dig a seven-foot wide trench about a foot-and-a-half deep in the road in question, emplace the ties, affix the rails, then fill in the gaps with rock ballast to reduce lateral movement. It may be possible to just put the ties atop the concrete road, affix the rails, then pour ballast (and you would need much more ballast at that point), but even then there would be too much "give" to it and, much like the stories of synchronized marching military formations creating reverberations through a bridge and collapsing it, too much lateral motion would tear your new railroad apart at any kind of speed.
And if you plan to move a train at track speed, you need banked curves; much more steeply than a typical Interstate curve is banked. I don't know exactly how steep (certainly not NASCAR-curve steep...), but when we're stopped on tightly-banked curves, engine vibration will gently nudge your 64-ounce Big Gulp right off the engineer's control stand if you're not paying attention.
The best bet would be to use existing rail...and move very, very slowly. There are many areas in the U.S. where old rail exists, and have federally-mandated 10 MPH speed restrictions (as in, do-not-exceed or you'll be in the dirt...).
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