April 26, 2026

I thought I was done expanding my Trench Crusade mobile force, but a week ago I found the Audrey Ramirez Oiler from the Happy Meal Atlantis the Lost Empire range of toys at the swap meet for a dollar, so I decided I would build one more armored vehicle.

I did two more dugout entrances for my Trench Crusade collection.  I included some entrenching tool (shovels and picks).  These will probably be the last.

I got a few more divers for my Nautilus crew and painted them up.

Mid-week I got the courage to paint one of my large gun emplacements for my Trench Crusade collection.  I’m happy with the outcome.

I’ve had some Bandai bridging for more than two decades and decided this week it was time to turn them into trench bridging for my Trench Crusade collection… a little modification and some Milliput sandbags.

Next I turned my attention to a second large gun emplacement.  The two I have painted this week are huge pieces and will sit on large trench bases… thankfully those bases are complete.

With the large gun emplacements done, I brought out the second of my smaller stationary gun emplacements for painting.  With that done I have all my stationary gun emplacements finished… four in total.

I closed the week painting two ruins for my Trench Crusade collection.  These ruins were obtained from the two companies that offer the gun emplacements I have been painting for Trench Crusade…AntediluvianPrints (Etsy) and toadstoolstudio (eBay).

April 19, 2026

This weekend I found a couple of broken toys at the swap meet… a broken spaceship hull and what looked like the top to another vehicle or spaceship.  I paid one dollar (fifty cents each) for the two of them.  When I got them home, I decided I wanted to see if I could join them into one complete spaceship.  Figuring out how to join the hull and cabin top into one unit was the hard part, but all I needed was some scrap Evergreen plastic I had on my workbench and the union was complete.  It’s an odd-looking craft, but once I had it repainted, I liked the end result.

I purchased a Dept. 56 religious shrine at Savers thrift store a couple months ago, did some modification, and gave it a new paint job.  I thought it would be a good addition to my Trench Crusade collection, but I wasn’t sure how I would incorporate it into the layout.  This week I decided to give it a trench emplacement base.  The unique part of this trench build is that I added stairs so the shrine could be easily accessed… probably not a good idea for defense but added to its value as a place of worship.

Back to working on my Trench Crusade trenches, I finished what will probably be the last of my trench sections, a destroyed bunker on one of the interior trench emplacements.  I order the destroyed bunker because I thought my layout needed more destruction.  I was surprised by its large size which required a much larger base than I thought it would.  I now have completed eleven frontline trench sections and 13 interior trench emplacement sections.  I think that should be it though I will be making a few more removeable shrines and bunker entrances.

April 12, 2026

I began the week by building a trench base for my McFarlane Toys’ Spawn cross (purchased about 10 years ago at the swap meet for $3).  To that I added a removeable True Hero Military sandbag defense I purchased recently at the swap meet for a dollar.

I used a Duplo piece covered by Evergreen plastic to create a moveable medic station entrance for my Trench Crusade collection.

Midweek I noticed that I had the water tank from an Atlantis the Lost Empire Water Tanker that was left over from using most of that vehicle as an armored vehicle for my Trench Crusade collection.  I decided to use the left-over water tank as a reserve water tank for my trench system.

Late in the week I built the trench emplacement for one of my large artillery pieces.  As with the others, this was done using Dupo pieces as the inner core of the emplacement which was then covered with Evergreen plastic.

In putting together my trench emplacements, I think details are an important element in enriching the look of the layout.  Since I want to keep my options open as to how the layout will be arranged, removeable features like shrines and bunker entrances offer flexibility of detail that I need.  Earlier I made removeable HQ and hospital/medical entrances that I think work well, so I turned my attention to bunker entrances for the troops.

April 5, 2026

The week opened with a find at the swap meet… three plastic bullets for one dollar.  This was just what I needed to build more ammo shrines for Trench Crusade. 

That swap meet also yielded up a base for a monster or superhero that had been separated from its figure.  The base was in the form of a crater that was perfect for use with my Trench Crusade trench system.  Using Evergreen v-groove plastic I built trench-siding around it so that it matched the height of my other trench pieces.  Once finished I had a nice ruin for my trenches that only cost me a dollar.

I spent the rest of the week building more trench emplacements using Duplo blocks to provide the inner core and Evergreen plastic for the outer detail.   In addition, I also painted the large Trench Crusade cross that was the piece of terrain that initially drew my attention to the Trench Crusade concept.