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When lockdown sets I had my parents ride to the next province and escape COVID-19 before it blows up. Luckily we are all alright. I told them to pack up my layout back in Jakarta, and decide to revamp it here. It's been months since I made progress on my layout back in Jakarta due to studies. But with the lockdown, I actually got to many things and many builds. I don't have a timelapse but this is what I made. A Balinese/Japanese diorama. I was inspired by the Japanese waterfall I saw in Nikko, particularly Chuzenji Lake. I am also attempting to build paddy fields using hard brushes, they would be piled up much like the ricefields you'd see in Indonesia, particularly Bali. The baseboard is made out of multiplex wood and 3 layers of single wall corrugated cardboard I got for free from appliance stores. I painted with a green base and made the scenery. I wanted to begin with the heavy duty objects such as the hills and the mountains first. For the paddy field I had piled a couple of glued Styrofoam together and painted the sides with brown colour. The challenge was to build the paddy texture and I used hard paint brushes. I was wondering if I could use long static grass instead, since using hard paint brushes aren't exactly yielding best results... I had it spun like that because I was making the hills first. The main hill would have two tunnels running through it, and on top, I was inspired by a Japanese manmade waterfall, the one with bricks and look like steps. I am very keen of doing it when I saw a tutorial from makrlinofsweden. I've painted most of the mountain and am currently waiting on some plaster molded into layers of aluminium foil before continuing. The waterfall would then flow unto a river, which I've formed using wet tissue and glue, and would flow to the lake. The outer rail would climb to a cliffside, where I wanted to make sort of a hill, or a city bored through the cliff. I am still looking for ideas, but the top is virtually ready, that's why I took the opportunity to try out a static grass applicator built using a mosquito racket. From the cliff it would go down through the bridge and encircling the lake before arriving at the station. I had some points from an old antiques shop, and most of them are either manual turnovers or the machinery has been burnt to crisp. I made a Y turnover combining 3 rail lines, and would need to insulate the setup later. In the middle I'm planning to have a city going, but I think I'm going to put it off at the last time, since buildings are so expensive and I wanted to focus on scenery and completing the circuit first. But with the generous amount of toilet paper I've used, I was wondering if there are any suggestions on using used toilet paper rolls for industry? I was thinking that since this layout would feature a shitton of paddy fields, I wanted to make a rice silo, ones that you see in Japan. My main problem other than a lack of materials is the outer track, the steep climb had my locomotives crying for mercy and an embankment after a drop had caused a couple of derailments when passing under the waterfall. Most particularly my 100 Series Shinkansen. The turnovers aren't exactly stellar as well, I would need to sort out the electronics too.. I am still a beginner and have a lot of things I want to do, and I really appreciate if I could get some feedback and guidance from this community. Is the lake an ok color, should I put varnish? Is the mountain the correct color, etc... I am really open to any feedback on my first layout, and I really want to make it stellar. I hope you could enjoy my layout, Nippon Bali. Thank you.

After having spent a few months in Sri Lanka and India travelling on around 100 hours of trains, my wife and I were starting to think that we were getting bored of trains... 😲 We just finished a month in China and wow this is something else. We took a 14 hour bullet train from Shanghai to Chengdu and it was so comfortable that the time flew by! Even the "Slow" trains are pretty comfortable, clean, air-conditioned and very cheap. I think China is really an exciting place to explore train travel! Can't wait to see if the mag-lev will actually get built! I want to get on that as soon as it's ready! Do we think they will actually build it? Or is it just showing off?