Wednesday,January 25, 1984AThe Battalion/Page 3
Youth ranch to offer
herapy, place to live
By RENEE HARRELL
Reporter
Live-In Therapy for
Youth, a program to help 10
to 17-year-olds overcome
family problems, is scheduled
to open April 7, says Richard
"Dick” Brimer, director of re
sidential services at Still Creek
Ranch.
The ranch, 13 miles north
east of Bryan, offers 500 acres
of rolling pastures, barns,
pens, stock tanks and lives
tock.
“I’ve seen, firsthand, a
tremendous need for a facility
like this,” Brimer said.
Two comfortable homes, a
I swimming pool and a large re-
j creation building are present
ly on the ranch.
In the future they plan to
add more houses to the ranch
and also to take in girls, Brim
er said. House parents and
five to seven boys will live in
each house.
Brimer is carefully plan
ning the policies on admission
and discharge for the state-
licensed facility. The treat
ment team consists of psycho
logists, physicians, counselors,
and a social worker.
The boys will have personal
treatment and group therapy.
They will also have family
visits. When both the youth
and his family are ready, the
youth will have weekend visits
at home. The next step is
home during the week and
ranch visits on the weekend.
This type of therapy is dif
ferent than most because it is
family-oriented. It doesn’t
help to label the child an
“emotionally disturbed
youth”, but to have more
emphasis on the family prob
lem, Brimer said.
Frances Rinehart, director
of development, is in charge
of the first community-wide
“house shower” to set up
housekeeping for the first
home at Still Creek Ranch.
Because federal or state
funds will not be used for Still
Creek Ranch, people who
understand family life prob
lems and want to be a part of
building a healthy program
can help.
The “house shower” will be
held 2 to 4 p.m. Feb. 12 at the
College Station Community
Center. The public is invited
to select gifts for the ranch.
Prof studies alternative fuels
By SONDRA HOSTETLER
Reporter
Carbon fuel and a new en
Brazos Valley Trailriders
gear up for annual ride
By KEVIN S. INDA
Reporter
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Usually when people see
horses, wagons and a group of
People sitting around a camp-
Jire they think of a Western
movie, but it also could be a local
Bub called the Bra/os Valley
railriders.
Jerry Stuart, the club’s presi-
Bent, says the club was started by
a number of area residents who
loutinely got together for trail-
[ides each month.
“We had been riding
igether for some time before
>e organized into a trailriding
club,” Stuart said.
One of the club’s annual acti
vities is riding to Houston for the
livestock show and rodeo, Stuart
Taid. This year the club mem
bers will leave College Station
Feb. 14, on a 14-day horseback
'fide through the backroads of
Texas that will take them to
Houston for the event, he said.
The trailride to Houston used
to begin in Phelps, near Hunt-
iville, Stuart said, where the loc-
riders met another trailriding
[roup, the Spanish Trail, and
both groups rode to Houston
together.
“Last year we decided to leave
from College Station a week ear
ly and add another week to the
trailride,” Stuart said.
The Brazos Valley Trailriders
has about 70 members, and
Stuart expects about 40 mem
bers to participate in the trail
ride to Houston.
He says a typical day on the
trail begins at dawn and ends
with the group sitting and eating
around the campfire. The mem
bers usually take a short time for
lunch along the road, and cook
their large meal, usually steak,
chili or sausage, over the camp
fire at night.
The campfire is essential,
Stuart said, since no chuckwa-
gon is with the group until it
reaches Phelps, where the group
joins the Spanish Trail club.
Stuart said members sleep in
trailers or campers that they
drive to the evening’s campsite
before they begin riding each
day. One large truck then takes
the riders back to their horses,
where they begin the day’s trail
ride.
Even though the trailride
takes place on backroads, Stuart
says spotters are placed at the
beginning and the end of the
trailride to alert and direct traf
fic around the horses.
Troy Yates, trail boss, is in
charge of keeping people in line
and within the rules set by the
club.
He says the trailride is a good
way of relaxing and spending
time with family. “This year
could be a little cold, but if the
weather is nice, everybody en
joys it,” Yates said.
gine design could be the com
bination that will lead to a suc
cessful coal-fueled engine, says a
Texas A&M research engineer.
Dr. William Harris, who is
studying alternate fuels, said
that through proper research an
engine fueled by coal could be
successfully developed.
Changes would have to be made
in both the engine and the com
position of the coal fuel, he says.
The research on coal-fueled
engines that began in Germany
during the early 1900s was en
ded after World War II. Much
of the information from this re
search was either lost or des
troyed over the past 30 years,
according to a recent report
from Germany on coal-fueled
engines.
Harris says continued re
search in coal would be benefi
cial because coal’s purified form,
carbon, is renewable, unlike pet
roleum-based fuel.
“The idea of using renewable
resources appeals to environ
mentalists because the carbon
dioxide is returned to the en
vironment in a closed system,”
Harris said.
After purification, carbon is
still about one-half the price of
petroleum, Harris said. The
coal-powered car could be
driven from Texas to the East
Coast and back on about $7
worth of coal fuel, he said.
Pure carbon, a fuel with the
consistency of powdered sugar,
is more effective than coal parti
cles, Harris says. However, after
carbon is refined, problems still
exist, roblems such as combus
tion, erosion, and fuel injection,
can be solved with a new engine
design, he said.
Harris hopes the fine powder
of the carbon will be useful for
fuel injection into the engine
system. The powder, with a
graphite base acting as a natural
lubricant, should be easier to
transport than the larger parti
cles of coal, he says.
Graphite in carbon also
should retard erosion in the in
ternal mechanism of the engine
itself, Harris says. He expressed
a hope that his new design idea
will be useful against erosion.
His design should enable the
engine to operate without the in
ternal friction of conventional
engines, he says. Abrasion from
the coal was one reason the tra
ditional coal-fueled engine was
unsuccessful.
Dr. Jerald Caton, assistant
professor of mechanical en
gineering, learned through ex
perimental computer models
that the difficulty in combustion
of coal could be reduced by a
pilot flame. The initiator fuel
would keep the flame burning,
so a proper flame speed could be
generated for adequate engine
performance.
Caton, a colleague of Harris,
says that using coal fuel for an
automobile probably is far in the
future.
The engine of a car rotates
too fast for proper combustion
with carbon, he says, but loco
motive egines would be ideal for
carbon fuel because of the heavy
parts and lower speed of the en
gine.
Caton has tested Harris’ en
gine design on a computer mod
el. The design is based on a mod
ification in the piston that pro
tects the engine from being
eroded by the coal particles.
Harris and Caton emphasized
that even though their idea
appears to operate satisfactorily
on a computer model, it still is
necessary to test a working mod
el of the engine. Complications
in the design will show up in this
model, Caton says.
Both researchers say the
problems of the coal-fueled en
gine could be solved with time,
money, and further research.
Harris says that in the past lit
tle interest has been shown in the
development of the new engine
design because of the great ex
pense and time required.
However, Caton says, the U.S.
Department of Energy recently
funded research for the project,
and interest is beginning to pick
up.
evelopment
oundation
‘Meeting the Needs of Texas ASM
Today and Tomorrow”
Office of Development
Texas A&M University
610 Evans Library
845-8161
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