It once brought strong-armed men from their homes to the steel mills. It brought city slickers from Chicago for a day at the beach. It took a generation off to war and brought them back.

The South Shore, for much of its history a down-at-the-heels interurban railroad, has had an outsized impact on the region's psyche and spirit.

"It has been around and through so much," said Steve McShane, curator of the Calumet Regional Archives.

In fact, it has been around for exactly 100 years, with most counting the South Shore's birth from the day it spanned the 68 miles from Hammond to South Bend.

The Midwest Railroad Research Center of the Indiana Historical Society is celebrating the railroad's centennial this week, with events at South Bend Regional Airport, which is the South Bend terminus.

The railroad has a rich and fabled history, McShane said. In 1911, the Prairie Club of Chicago used the South Shore for regular excursions into the wilds of Northwest Indiana's Lake Michigan shoreline.

A goal to establish a national park there fell short, but the group was successful in establishing a Dunes state park. It was left to a later generation to establish the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

"During the Progressive Era, they saw these outdoor excursions as a way to escape the demoralizing effects of the urban areas," McShane said.

At one time, it would be hard to find a resident of a northern Lake County city who had not ridden on the South Shore, usually on a regular basis.

But every boom on the railroad was followed by a bust. It went bankrupt in both 1933 and 1938.

During World War II, it carried its all-time record of 6 million passengers per year. But with the growth of automobile travel and the opening of major interstate highways in the 1950s, its fortunes again flagged.

South Shore General Manager Gerald Hanas, who has been with the railroad since the late 1970s, is the first to acknowledge the ride to today has been a bumpy one.

Current South Shore operator Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District was formed in 1977, after the railroad's private operator attempted to discontinue all passenger service.

When NICTD got involved, the railroad's passenger cars dated back to 1926, Hanas said. There were days in the winter when only one or two trains operated per day. Converted coal stoves cast what little heat there was in winter. Gas air conditioners struggled through the summer to give riders a whiff of cool air.

"It was pretty nip and tuck," Hanas said. "We like to say if we did it all again, we would just shut the railroad down for four years."

It took a mighty act of political will to save the passenger railroad. Communities and legislators pulled together and came up with federal revenue-sharing funds to help fund the railroad. The state of Indiana also kicked in funds and federal matching funds were obtained.

The South Shore is on a solid footing today, annually carrying more than 4 million passengers and splitting its revenue about evenly between fares and government subsidies.

It also is more than halfway through a $124 million upgrade of its system, the largest capital investment since industrial titan Samuel Insull built up the line in the 1920s.

It now dreams of a bigger future, where travel times from South Bend to Chicago are cut by as much as a half-hour and new extensions are built to Lowell in Lake County and Valparaiso in Porter County.

"The theme now is economic development and trying to make all of Northwest Indiana, both urban and suburban, comparable with the rest of suburban Chicago with respect to rail access," Hanas said.

Some see the South Shore extension as another chapter in the railroad's ability to adapt to changing times, albeit not always smoothly.

"It's interesting the South Shore has recognized the demographic shift to suburban areas," McShane said. "The idea seems to be to go where the people are."

South Shore timeline

1903: Streetcar line established between East Chicago and Indiana Harbor. One year later it's renamed "The Chicago, Lake Shore, and South Bend Railway."

1908: Reaches its final terminus in South Bend. It now stretches 68 miles across Northwest Indiana to Hammond.

1909: Route extended to Pullman, Illinois. Passengers change trains to get to downtown Chicago.

1925: Railroad goes bankrupt and utilities magnate Samuel Insull purchases it. He renames it "The Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad."

1925 to 1930: New stations built and trains converted to DC power so they can run on Illinois Central tracks to downtown Chicago. Freight business grows.

1933: Railroad goes bankrupt in depths of Great Depression.

1938: After years of operating under direction of bankruptcy court railroad returns to profitability.

1941-1945: Ridership booms in war years, climbing to more than 6 million annually, which is still a record.

1956: Indiana Toll Road opens. The Toll Road and other interstates spell the doom of long-haul passenger railroads and interurban railroads across the United States.

1965: Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad buys South Shore, mainly as freight link to get coal to new Bethlehem Steel plant in Burns Harbor.

1976: Owner CSX asks federal regulators to approve the discontinuance of all passenger service on South Shore.

1977: Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District formed to rescue South Shore passenger service. State approves annual grants to subsidize passenger service.

1977 to 1984: Rail line remains privately owned but NICTD buys new rail cars and modernizes system.

1989: Private owner of railroad goes bankrupt. NICTD begins direct operation of South Shore.

1990: With financial help from state, NICTD purchases South Shore line.

1992: New station with parking opens in Hegewisch and new South Bend airport terminal station opens.

Jan. 18, 1993: Two South Shore trains heading in opposite directions in Gary sideswipe each other just west of a trestle bridge, killing seven people.

1998: New Hammond station and high-level boarding platforms opened.

June 18, 1998: Three men are killed as a westbound South Shore commuter train collides with a steel-hauling flat-bed truck parked across the rails awaiting admittance to a Porter County steel manufacturer.

Dec. 2000: West Lake Corridor study outlining proposed extensions to Lowell and Valparaiso completed.

2004: Work begins on a $124 million improvement project, the largest since the 1920s. Now 65 percent complete, it includes new overhead wires and signal devices to improve safety and reliability.

Nov. 2004: U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky obtains $1.5 million in funding for West Lake feasibility study. Towns and cities along route kick in $1.5 million more.

April 29, 2005: General Assembly passes bill creating Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority. Legislation mandates one of RDA's four projects will be the extension of South Shore rail line.

Dec. 2006: Sumitomo Corp. of America submits successful

Jan. 3, 2007: NICTD reports 4.21 million passengers road South Shore in 2006, a 10.7 percent jump over 2005 and the most carried by the commuter railroad since 1957.

June 26-28: 100 years of the South Shore celebrated by Midwest Railroad Research Center of the Indiana Historical Society at South Bend.