Where your money goes, and an update on where I am going next

I realized recently that many of you may not know what your Patreon money goes towards, other than just getting you access to what I post. If you weren't aware of the updates I sometimes post on facebook, you'd have no idea what I've been up to since I started this Patreon account a few years ago. Well, you can see the answer to that in these photos. All of the money that I've made doing archival research, as well as from Patreon, I've put back into preserving the history of armored vehicles.

The tracked carrier is the sole T94 Cargo Tractor, built by Allis-Chalmers around 1957. It was one of four designs which were meant to replace the WW2 era high-speed tractors (T85, T86, and T93 were the others) but none of them went into production. Even though I've searched all throughout the records from the time period when the T94 was built, I've never found any mention of it in the archives. I've seen a few documents for the other three, which are uploaded here, but never the T94. There isn't much I can do to restore it until I've found information on how it is supposed to be, so I will do my best to preserve it, and under my care I know it's safe from being scrapped. I intend to buy up other unique and prototype vehicles which are in danger of being lost, but I also want to be able to build a building to keep them out of the elements first.

The frontloader is an ex-military Hough H90-CM, built in 1964. I got it in order to do the heavy lifting on the T94, to push it around when necessary, and also to do the digging that will be necessary to put a building on my property.

The models are just some of the nearly 20 original developmental models that I have acquired over the past two years. After seeing these sort of models come up for sale on ebay or at flea markets, and then disappearing, never to be seen again, I decided I would be the one to save them. A large portion of the models I have are French, due to finding a couple of French sellers which had Eurosatory models from AMX and Panhard. Some of these models you can find pictures of on my Flickr account. https://www.flickr.com/photos/198481929@N08/collections/72157722103051940/ Mostly the larger ones I have not photographed yet, but I intend to. I got them out to take these pictures, but normally they are stored in archival boxes and padded with non-acidic cloth, so they are properly preserved. I would like to display them all in a museum one day.

In the order I got them, the models I have are: T116, XM548 (unknown derivative), E-One Mark 44, PUMA 120mm Mörserträger, VBM/GTK, Rayo 160mm, AMX-13 Roland, Berliet BL-12/VXB-170, ETAS, LRAT, Thyssen-Henschel TM-170, AMX-30R with Aspida Albatros (uncertain about that ID), Panhard VCR, Panhard VBL, Panhard AML-90 Turret, Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie 2, Canadair XM571 Dynatrac, T88, and M59 marketing model. There is also a Renault VBC-90 and MAN KAT1 which I intend to buy, but have not received yet.

The company I normally research for has been letting me down severely this year by cutting back the amount of work they want in comparison to last year. Even last year I did not work as much as I feel I should have. I try to do additional research on my own time for people who need things, but this is infrequent and it doesn't earn much money in the grand scheme of things; not that archival research earns a ton of money to begin with. I will probably be moving on to another job soon, at least for a time, in order to try and start making the serious money I need for the building and other tanks I want to save. Fortunately I have a huge amount of documents saved up, and even more new things I can post here once I am no longer under an NDA.