Ypres 1918

[MPG]

Hello,

I was trawling through some archives at work, and came acorss this - a copy of the trenches around Ypres dated 10.7.18. What amazed me was the extent of the trench works and the effort put into marking them out, then the change of colour, and the disclaimer noting 'Trenches corrected from information recieved up to 7.7.18'.

Trenches.jpg

[Falconius]

That is very interesting. I wish there was a more complete legend though. There are three types of lines that look like railroads to me, solid coloured for the trenches and dashed outlines for tunnels (I assume), although the roads are clearly solid outline so maybe dashed outline is ... foot paths? No, maybe filled in trenches? Covered trenches? The lines of x's must be barbed wire.

There is a place there they named "Machine Gun Farm".

Edit: I figured out two of the symbols for rails, the single line and double line, because that is pretty obvious, but the one with outline and solid dashes in it I still don't understand.

[MPG]

That is very interesting. I wish there was a more complete legend though. There are three types of lines that look like railroads to me, solid coloured for the trenches and dashed outlines for tunnels (I assume), although the roads are clearly solid outline so maybe dashed outline is ... foot paths? No, maybe filled in trenches? Covered trenches? The lines of x's must be barbed wire.

There is a place there they named "Machine Gun Farm".

Edit: I figured out two of the symbols for rails, the single line and double line, because that is pretty obvious, but the one with outline and solid dashes in it I still don't understand.

There are some very familiar place names - Luton and Taunton for example, which I imagine was for ease of reference in the field; navigating the works must have been a problem, ramping up to a nightmare when under fire.
Perhaps the outline with solid dashes are artillary routes, as they do look similar to railway sidings? There's also an entire road made from sleepers.