About your Edit#2 : Weird ! Try to right-click onto the view name (top-left corner inside of the view window) and enable
Statistics. This should done the trick.
Now to add shadows just try this :
Select your object, right-click and open the
object properties, then enable
vertex channel display :
vertex color (disable
shaded mode).
Now go to the modifiers panel and select vertex editing mode (I assume your object is converted to Editable Mesh/Poly). You may notice that there is a
Edit vertex colors tab. Select a vertex and change its color. Now you can add a little touch of magic into your track.
You can also change vertices colors by selecting the poly edit mode, but smooth shadows would be better in this track.
If it's a huge surface with lot of vertices you can add the
Vertex paint modifier and play with it.
I think you can find other tricks with this until I write a better tutorial.