@SanMarcoTrain: Meet the Jacksonville resident who’s given a voice to a source of frustration for commuters

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Commuters on Wednesday morning once again had to sit and wait out a train going through San Marco.

Over the years, trains slowly passing across San Marco Boulevard, Hendricks Avenue and Atlantic Boulevard — which, collectively, have come to be known as the “San Marco Train” — have made thousands of people late to work, meetings and appointments over the years.

News4Jax has been tracking the train for weeks, and numerous times our cameras caught the train stopped on the railroad tracks, with drivers and pedestrians wondering when it will move again.

But did you know the train can talk? News4Jax tracked down Jack DeYoung, the Jacksonville man behind the Twitter account @SanMarcoTrain, to find out why he wanted to be the voice of something commuters find so annoying.

“It was mostly to make my wife and coworkers laugh,” DeYoung said. “I literally did it in my car while waiting for a train. Registered the account.”

Several years ago, DeYoung brought the train from the tracks through the historic neighborhood near downtown to the land of opinions and blue checkmarks.

“I was late to a meeting and I had to call my boss to apologize and dawned on me that’s the most viable excuse to get out of a meeting in San Marco,” DeYoung recounted. “He was a little irritated but then was, like, ‘Hey, you should do a fake Twitter account.’”

What started as a Twitter account with a small following of friends has churned into a Twitter handle followed by thousands.

“It’s people willingly getting roasted by an inanimate object,” DeYoung said. “It’s hysterical to me.”

On Twitter, the wordsmith from San Marco clicks out criticism to drivers who are unlucky enough to bask in the train’s steel-car resplendence that makes so many late to work.

“‘Who made San Marco Train mad?’ is an interesting question. You did. You thought there would be no repercussions after you honked your horns and screamed your expletives? Think again, losers. Truth be told, we’re not mad...we’re just disappointed. Reap our whirlwind,” reads a tweet from March.

More recently The train even responded to the Jacksonville’s Sheriff’s Office’s warning of a stoppage during Florida-Georgia weekend last month.

“It’s the world’s largest outdoor blocktail party for a reason, losers,” the tweet reads.

While News4Jax has been watching the train around the clock for weeks, the stall got so bad one Sunday night pedestrians even hopped over the stopped behemoth.

“It’s always an inopportune time when you’re blocked,” DeYoung said. “It’s never like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a casual Friday and I’m just cruising around to get food.’”

But the San Marco Train Twitter account has run into a figurative roadblock: A bill has passed that lets the city put into action an agreement with the state to spend nearly $1 million in federal grant money to build additional tracks at a local rail yard, with the goal of reducing train backups that stop traffic in San Marco.

DeYoung said he still posts on the account every now and again because it’s fun.