Named for former ASLRRA Chair Thomas L. Schlosser, this award will be presented on an annual basis to recognize an individual for their long-term significant service to the ASLRRA.
To view the criteria for this award, please click here.
Today, ASLRRA offers a wide array of safety resources to its members. But those resources were not always available – it took Association members to help create them. Of those members, Gary Vaughn stands out as someone whose desire to improve safety through overarching service to ASLRRA has truly left the Association and the short line railroad industry a better place.
Vaughn played a major role in developing many of the resources now used by ASLRRA members. This includes all templates for 49 CFR Part 243: Training, Qualification, and Oversight for Safety-Related Railroad Employees, as well as templates for conductor certification and electronic devices.
In his work with the Association’s Safety and Training (S&T) Committee, Vaughn mentored many short line railroad employees. He was always willing to answer compliance questions, share training programs and ideas and discuss program development.
Vaughn’s former Watco colleague Ed McKechnie once quipped that Vaughn, who at the time was Watco’s senior vice president of safety and environmental health, spent “half his time…devoted to benefitting the industry and the ASLRRA Safety and Training Committee.”
Many sought Vaughn’s advice on operating rules and regulatory and industry standards during the years he worked at Watco. His counsel inspired countless railroaders, who took his ideas and attitudes back to their organizations. To say that Vaughn has influenced a whole generation of industry professionals is no understatement.
Vaughn’s approach to safety was rooted in his early experience as a railroader and volunteer firefighter and EMT. Following his father – a WWII veteran and railroader of 32 years – into railroading, the two men worked together at the same tower in Michigan as operators and telegraphers.
Vaughn began his railroad career working for the Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W) while attending the University of Michigan. After college he continued railroading with N&W and Norfolk Southern. Not only was Vaughn learning about the large railroad’s approach to safety, but he was also seeing the aftermath of accidents as a first responder, which motivated him to work to prevent such accidents from ever happening.
In this photo from early in his career, circa 1971, Vaughn hands up orders to a passing freight train.
Vaughn made the move to the short line industry in 1996, working for RailTex and Rail America in roles such as operations manager, division superintendent, general manager and regional safety manager. In 2003 he joined Watco as Safety Director and began making his mark on the company’s safety performance. Under his decade-plus career at Watco, the company achieved numerous year-over-year improved safety records due to Vaughn’s work to both restructure the safety department and implement workplace safety education and awareness programs.
In 2015 Vaughn transitioned to a consultant role for Watco, allowing him to spend more time helping improve safety across the entire short line freight rail industry. Beyond serving as chair of ASLRRA’s Safety & Training Committee, he was a voting member of the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) and a member of many FRA working groups that helped develop new regulatory language. While working with agencies on the regulatory front, Vaughn was also serving as the first-ever short line representative chairman of the General Code of Operating Rules Committee and a member of the Operating Rules of America Committee.
On top of these other efforts, Vaughn also remained committed to the power of education to improve safety. He has served as an executive board member for Kansas Operation Lifesaver, as vice chairman of the Oklahoma Operation Lifesaver Executive Board and was a member of the Short Line Safety Institute’s (SLSI) first Board of Directors.
Throughout his years in railroading, Vaughn has viewed his colleagues as family and he wanted others to share this mindset. Taking care of fellow team members to ensure they could go home in exactly the same condition as they had arrived was always Vaughn’s highest priority. There were three times in Vaughn’s career when he had to bear the news of a fatal accident to the individual’s next of kin, and those experiences convinced him to redouble his safety focus.
In 2010, ASLRRA established the Safety Professional of the Year Award, and Vaughn was the very first recipient. After receiving this honor, Vaughn continued in his efforts to improve industry safety until his retirement in 2019.
Although he has stepped away from an active role in the short line railroad world, Vaughn’s presence continues to reverberate through the industry. It is for these decades of service to ASLRRA and its members that the Association is pleased to name Gary Vaughn its 2026 Schlosser Distinguished Service Award recipient.
Top Left: Vaughn was the first winner of the Safety Professional of the Year Award, given in 2010 at the Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas. He was joined onstage for a photo by members of ASLRRA's S&T Committee.
Bottom Left: Vaughn onstage at the 2010 Annual Conference with Mitch Harris, the current chair of the S&T Committee who was vice-chair at the time.
Below: Vaughn with Tom Leopold (far left) and Tyrone James (center) at another ASLRRA conference.
2025
2024
James A. Bowers
2023
Jack Parliament
2022
Richard Timmons
2021
Carl Belke
2019
Peter Gilbertson
2018
Mort Fuller
2017
Gary Griswell
2016
George Betke
2015
Keith Hartwell
2014
Judy Petry
2013
Mike Ogborn
2012
Tom Schlosser
