I made this cake for my grandson's birthday. The original design for this cake was to have the animals caged in between each tier. I ran into issues with building the stand and decided that I would just use my cake stacker system and hide the center dowel. The tree is made from modeling chocolate of which I painted over with dark chocolate. This was actually the second tree that I made for this cake. The first one was made from fondant and even the wire armature that I made for it wouldn't hold up to the weight of it. I had made a tree out of RKT before but I was seeking to make a realistic tree and you can't shape RKT to form the many branches needed for a realistic tree. I had to keep it refrigerated because it would become soft. So, need to work on that. The tiers were layered, filled and iced then placed into the refrigerator to firm up before I cut the spiral. Then I just took the piece I removed and flipped it on top of the tier I removed it from to make the free standing train track that lead up to the next tier. A word of advice...I would definitely give a 4" difference in size between the tiers. This cake was a 4", 6" and 8" but there wasn't enough clearance from one tier to the next to join the train track. All of the animals were made from gumpaste and the water was made from piping gel that I tinted with gel coloring. It was a lot of work but to see the look on this little boys face made it well worth it.