In 1995, we proposed that a low cost, wide acceptance Time-Of-Flight system
be added to BNL-AGS Experiment 896, to provide the first direct Particle Identification
(PID) capabilities for charged hadron tracks in the experiment. The system consists of
three separate walls of long plastic scintillator slats with double-ended PMT readout.
Two walls were constructed at Rice University, and a third wall was obtained from the
BNL-AGS E877 experiment. The functional goals of the system concentrate on the direct PID of
the daughter tracks of Lambda hyperons, Kshort mesons, and possibly Antilambda hyperons,
that are reconstructed in the main forward tracking systems of E896. The system has also
been used to support specific fast hardware triggers on such daughters. A major data set
for ~11.5 GeV/c/nucleon Au+Au collisions collected in April 1998 is presently under
analysis at Rice.