Gary - Love the diorama work. On the narrow trenches the Germans made their tranches wider after the Mark 1's were able to drive over them. That is why you see photos of the Mark IV's with the big bundles of sticks. They used the bundles of sticks to fill in the wider trenches to cross.
This thread really got me on a WW1 kick. I think I have a kit for every WW1 armored car that was mass produced. Also have a German A7V and French FT-17.
I'm planning to do a diorama with the Mark I Male in the desert and the female in the wet, though maybe not really muddy. Hoping to get around to doing that soon. I kind of disappeared a bit. I got intersted in the crazy WW1 camo jobs and built a couple other tanks. I did a French St. Chamond. That is what is in the movie clip, that tank is huge. Then built this French Scneider CA-1. The idea of the camo on these was to hide the shape from airplanes, not to make them hard to see in general, that's why they used the odd colors like pink and blue even though they would have been easy to see.
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One interesting detail on the French tank was a sign board that could be raised from inside the tank. The purpose was to signal infantry way behind the tank that it was time to move forward. That is what the red and white striped board is. In the kit it was just glued down and I got curious what purpose it served.
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I've been doing work on a wood model hopefully back to the Mark 1's soon.
