The Clastics Research Program at Shell Development in Houston spanned two and half decades (1948 to 1973) and involved more than 300 man years of professional time. It was, perhaps, one of the most exciting, important, influential, and successful corporate research programs in the oil industry. Larry Meckel – who worked there first as a summer hire, then research geologist, and later became manager of the Program – tells the story of those facilities, the equipment, the staff involved, and most importantly the accomplishments of that work. That Program, along with a similar one at the Shell Rijswijk Lab in the Netherlands, documented more than 24 different reservoir models that included virtually every clastic sand, from alluvial fans at the margin of the basin to submarine fans in the deep water.