I wasn’t very productive today. I didn’t find a job. I didn’t watch the World Cup. I didn’t finish the second trench tile. I didn’t even watch a film. However I have worked on the trench tile. I did watch “All Quiet on the Western Front” last night and I’ve been reviewing my other research material, principally two books. 
“The Canadian Corps in World War I”, is an Osprey title, perhaps the first one I bought. It has a Van Doo on the cover and I pretty much will do a unit of them, how big of a unit I’m not sure. Three officers and 116 enlisted men would be the best number. The other book I bought is called “Postcards from the Trenches”, it is real postcards produced during the Great War that this collector ultimately donated to a museum and they produced the book. It and the film reveal that my trenches may be too orderly, but other material shows it was all a matter of what sector the photos were taken in. The Canadians or the Stormtroopers as the Germans dubbed them were always sent where the fighting was thickest Vimy, Ypres, the Somme.
As for modeling, after a coat of thinned down white glue dried, I then painted the tile black with a 1″ brush and Rustoleum brand black paint. After that I twice went over the tile with a much smaller bush and Ceramcoat black. Both times I used my ‘dab and jab’ technique as this keeps as much grit as possible in place and also is the only way to get paint into some gaps. After even more black touchups, I painted the wood in the trench and just outside it Ceramcoat Terra Cota, which I thinned considerably with water. Two coats was necessary for coverage but also tends towards orange… 
Hopefully after the drybrush things look fine. My two observations are it is better to leave a small gap between planks on the ground as it is easier to get the brush in there, requires less planks, and is more historically accurate. The second observation is I don’t need quite as much grit inside the trenches. ess grit but maybe more little detail bits.
I found two more interesting links while reading threads over a the Lead Adventure forum which along with B&C, The Waaagh, and the Miniatures Page is my go to place to discuss painting, converting, terrain, and mini manufacturers. 
The first link is an informative page with pictures about life in the trenches of World War One along the Western Front primarily. The second link is to a new (to me) line of WW1 trench inserts. These would be inserted into correctly cut shapes of foam, saving all the bother of doing the planking and sandbagging by hand. They look pretty good, narrow, but big enough to accommodate 30mm bases apparently. They are designed for 25/28 mm miniatures. I may have to give them a go, at least their machine gun nests when I make version 2.0 of No Musk’s Land.
Tomorrow I’ll have to try harder to find a new job and it will be the drybrush fest as I will drybrush the planks, the sand and dirt, and the sandbags to match the first tile.
Musk's Miniatures 