Douglas van Veelen

Douglas van Veelen wrote a series of three volumes entitled Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads.

Letter to Editor
The following appeared in The Crier, 11 February 2009:


 * My name is Douglas van Veelen. Mom and Dad moved us out to Dunwoody, GA in 1968. I graduated from Dunwoody Elementary in 1968 and from Peachtree High in 1973. I do recall when all three section houses were still standing. I also recall the pasture on Ashford-Dunwoody Road and the concrete bridge over nothing where Perimeter Mall and I-285 would eventually be built.


 * I graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Civil Engineering (both 1980). I get my interest in railroading and in history from my mother (Doris). Her family had 13 members work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and its successors between 1910 and 1984.


 * I have been a faculty member for the ATE & Instrumentation Conference and the Test Engineering Conference. Articles I have written include "Civil Engineering for Live Steam Railroads", "Computerizing an Atlas 6” Lathe" and "Using In-Circuit Testers for Functional Testing". I have published the books “Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 1” and “The Gainesville Midland and Her Sister Short Lines.”


 * I have been asked to form the Dunwoody Railroad Museum. I have been working on long term plans. I am now announcing some of the ideas. At the moment, I have placed some railroad museum and train ride brochures from across the country in the Dunwoody Chamber of Commerce, the 1881 Roswell Railroad section house on Chamblee-Dunwoody road.


 * I will be arranging to be at the section house on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:00AM to 1:00PM in case anyone would like to come by and visit.


 * The sort of Railroad Museum I would like to build would be more of a hands-on railroad learning center. I will have historical artifacts for sure. However, I think an organization with hands-on classes/seminars would draw people back to the museum more often.


 * In keeping with this idea, my first project is to consider building a modular portable layout of the Roswell Railroad in HO scale for display at places such as Perimeter Mall and the local Railroad Shows. Once we have a permanent building, I would build a permanent layout that some modules can be connected to. I would like to have classes/seminars on model railroad module construction. This would allow participants to learn carpentry, electronics, painting and model building. I would also hope to provide an on-going group based on Live Steam railroad models.


 * Live Steam is a section of the railroad hobby that a few choose because they want to build riding models or are machinists. This will require a metal shop. It might be done in conjunction with either Peachtree High or Georgia Perimeter College. This would let the participants learn actual metal working skills for the future. I have made several patterns and had them cast in aluminum at an East Point foundry.


 * I would also like to offer visits to schools to discuss railroading from the usual history to the use of mathematics in metal working.


 * If a permanent building site is found and layout(s) are built, sponsorships from model railroad manufacturers might help to pay for the displays.


 * If anyone is interested in helping out, please let me know. Messages can be left at the section house.


 * Thanks.


 * Douglas van Veelen

Obituary
From Woodstock Funeral Home:


 * Douglas Edgar Van Veelen was born on November 14, 1955 and passed away on March 11, 2018 in Acworth, Georgia.

Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads
Doug van Veelen posted the following on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum:

May 14, 2009 04:37AM 		Registered: 13 years ago

Hi,

I just finished comb binding the first copy of "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 2 - Bridges."

As for Volume 2 the list is $32.49. This includes a very complex set of programs on CD to analyze structures.

Although this has a target audience of Live Steamers and Park Trains, the concepts here are just as valid for SG as NG as for G scale. Volume 1 actually had tables from 3.75" gauge to 42" gauge and at least one copy was used on a narrow gauge (36") tourist line and another was used by a SG short line (using the programs to generate the appropriate tables).

As I did with my Gainesville Midland book and my Civil Engineering Volume 1 book, I will be donating a copy to the Friends of the C&TS. If someone from the Friends can contact me back channel with a mailing address, I'll be glad to ship one out quickly.

Since Dan Markoff has been shared Eureka with all of us and riding behind Eureka on both the C&TS and the D&S gave Mom one of her all time enjoyable memories, If Dan could back channel me with a mailing address, I would like to send a copy to you.

Since eBay is now charging 8.75% for its Final Value Fee, I will not initially list this volume for sale on eBay. hot smiley

I have updated my store web site to offer the book. I will be accepting Paypal only on the store web site until I have all the CDs updated and available. I will consider adding money orders and cashier's checks at that time.

I currently have several small topics scheduled and completed for Volume 3. I have several more topics that I feel need to be discussed but have not started writing about. I am currently considering Volume 3 to be more like Volume 1 - touching on several different topics. Volume 4 will probably be a "For Dummies" type book and may even be available on DVD.

Volume 5 might be the first of the series where I will edit other author's articles. Several live steamers have asked me to cover track work and signals even though these topics are not really Civil Engineering. The valid reasoning is that they want one source for all live steam information.

If you have any topics (CE or not) to suggest, please feel free to let me know.

This book will not be available from anyone but myself since I am the publisher as well as the author. Large orders of books may take a while. I think I can print, bind, and check about 4-5 books per day assuming I do not run out of ink smiling bouncing smiley.

If anyone wishes to review my new book and will send me a copy of the publication with the review in it, I'll be glad to get a book to you.

As some know, I offer many outdated books that I have scanned to CD (the earliest is from 1848). I have done this to preserve the information (several books I have were crumbling in my fingers as I used them). I have priced the CDs fairly low to keep the incentive to sharing the scans with others without paying for them low. Scanning every page and item in the books is quite time consuming. I am keeping the price fairly low to make the information available to a wider audience (those that can not afford $50-300 per book).

I am working on sorting all my scanned books by railroad to offer railroad data by CD. This is taking a long time to sort the scans. However, I am interested in anyone's opinion on how to offer this information by railroad. I list my CDs below and my questions about how to offer the "by railroad" CDs.


 * Apple - Appleton's Railroad & Steamboat Travel Guide on CD
 * ARG - American Railway Guide on CD
 * OG - Official Guide of the Railways on CD
 * ORL - Official Railway List on CD
 * RM OG - Rand McNalley Railway Guide on CD


 * ORER - Official Railway Equipment Registers on CD
 * ORPTE - Official Register of Passenger Train Equipment on CD


 * Poors - Poor's Financial Manuals on railroads on CD
 * Moodys - Moody's Financial Manuals on railroads on CD


 * ABC - British railroad guides on CD
 * Amtrak manuals on CD

CDs for specific railroads - I currently have two or three RR based CDs available. I am currently working on RR based CDs with everything I have scanned including (but not limited to) OG, ORER, ORPTE, Poors, Moodys, ORL, Appletons, and American Railway Guide books. I currently have all my scanned books sorted by RR name from 1848 up to 1890. I will probably break the CDs at 1899 and then offer a follow up for the 1900-1999 time frame. If you have opinions on how to break up (or not to break it up at all) the CD, please drop me a line.


 * Conrail on CD
 * Norfolk Southern on CD
 * Pennsylvania Railroad manuals on CD
 * Rand McNally Shipper's Guides on CD

Thanks.

Doug vV

www.dougsrrshop.com

Douglas Edgar van Veelen is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Civil Engineering. He gets his interest in railroading and in history from his mother (Doris). Her family had 13 members work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and its successors between 1910 and 1984. He has written several articles for hobby and professional publications including Live Steam Magazine and Modeltec Magazine. He has been on national professional conferences as a faculty member for the ATE & Instrumentation Conference and the Test Engineering Conference. Articles include Computerizing an Atlas 6" Lathe and Using In-Circuit Testers for Functional Testing. Books that he has published include "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 1" and "The Gainesville Midland and Her Sister Short Lines." Future books (being written) include "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 3" and the history of the Roswell Railroad in Georgia.

"Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 2 - Bridges" continues where the popular "Civil Engineering for Outdoor Railroads Volume 1" leaves off. Although the title has the word "bridges", the book covers many of the areas of structural design. This book basically tries to argue that you should not worry about bridges collapsing. However, if you are interested in checking a design or designing from scratch, there are many examples using the programs written by the author. One of the examples shows how the author designed an overhead crane and figured out its maximum load. Since a railroad car is basically a moving bridge (supported between the trucks), these principles can be used to figure out how much a car might be able to support.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2009 04:39AM by dougvv.