For Paul Nelson, the South Shore Line's trains aren't just a way to get to work.

They're also rolling emblems of Northwest Indiana and its history.

That's why he made the documentary, “Riding the Rails of History: The Story of the South Shore Line,” that will be shown for the first time Sunday evening on Lakeshore Public Television.

“This is one of the icons of Northwest Indiana,” he said of the South Shore. “This is one of the things that unites us.”

People who come to Northwest Indiana and ride the train “find something magical about the South Shore,” he said.

Nelson lives in Munster and works for WGN-TV in Chicago. He spent two years on the South Shore documentary, and he did much of the editing on his laptop while riding the train to and from work.

“It's a 45-minute commute, and if there was a delay on the train I didn't mind it,” he said. “I'd think, ‘Hey, a little extra time.' ”

His 56-minute film traces the South Shore's history from the early 1900s to now, from its start as a trolley service in East Chicago, through its early days in the era of interurban trains, to the current 90-mile commuter line between South Bend and downtown Chicago.

It uses historical films and photos, along with current scenes of South Shore trains, riders and workers and includes comments by historians and civic leaders.

The documentary tells how the South Shore influenced Northwest Indiana, taking workers to jobs in the early 20th century's burgeoning steel industry and, at the same time, helping nature lovers and environmentalists from Chicago discover the Indiana Dunes.

Nelson's project explains how the South Shore nearly died in the 1920s, before industrialist Samuel Insull rescued and rebuilt it, and again nearly succumbed in the 1970s, when the C&O Railroad wanted to dump the money-losing passenger trains. Citizens mobilized then and persuaded Indiana legislators to support the passenger service and create the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which owns the service now.

“It's always managed to reinvent itself,” Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said in the documentary.

“It's a work in progress and always will be,” artist and former South Shore trainman Mitch Markovitz said of the railroad.

Bob Harris, who made a 1970s film about the South Shore, is one of the people interviewed in Nelson's documentary. The late Bill Warrick of Ogden Dunes, a longtime TV newsman, made another history film in the 1980s.

“There's been nothing in the last 30 years that I know of,” Nelson said, “so it's time to tell the story again.”

Nelson has offered DVDs of his documentary to every school district and library system in Lake and Porter counties.

He believes the film will interest a broad variety of people, not just history buffs.

And he hopes it gets kids interested in Northwest Indiana and in history.

“I'm a Northwest Indiana guy,” he said. “I see all the benefits of living here — all the diversity in the cities and in nature. And I don't have to move to Illinois to work in Chicago.”

Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.