Fury as train users forced to board without tickets as EVERY UK machine breaks, then FINED

RAIL commuters across Britain faced huge queues and delays this morning after a catastrophic break-down in hundreds of ticket machines, with one passenger describing the situation as "Trainmageddon".

Rail travel updateTWITTER / marklondon77 / pinsi1_

Rail commuters faced chaos across the country this morning

Queues formed at stations during morning rush hour when ticket machines across the country displayed error messages, causing delays and anger. 

Some people were forced to board trains without tickets due to the error, and were subsequently fined by train ticket inspectors. 

Sarah Doran, a journalist with the Radio Times, described the situation as ‘Trainmageddon’. 

She wrote: “None of Clapham Junction's ticket machines were accepting card this morning and there was only one person on the desk. Trainmageddon ensued.”

One twitter user revealed he was fined £20 after boarding a train without a ticket.

He said: "£20 fine because the ticket machines aren't working. F**k you London midland."

Another said: “Not very helpful at all. All machines @RLG either not working or not accepting card payments. Unacceptable queue in ticket [office].”

A third posted a message saying the ticket machines are “utter rubbish”, posting a photo of a huge queue in St Albans. 

Rail companies and train operators across the country posted warning messages on Twitter urging passengers to give themselves plenty of time. 

Southern Rail said: “We’ve had reports of network issues affecting our ticket vending machines this morning. We’re working to fix ASAP.”

They later posted a message saying the machines “should be back up and running now”.

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Anthony Smith, chief executive of the independent watchdog Transport Focus, said:

“Passengers tell us buying ticket is complicated enough without yet more complications. Train companies will need to investigate what caused this major disruption to ticket machines and to learn the lessons to ensure this doesn’t happen again. 

“The train companies affected must make sure that no one is penalised if they were unable to purchase a ticket because of this fault.”

Ticket machinesTWITTER / ROBDYLAN

Ticket machines across the UK displayed error messages

And Dave Anderson, digital performance expert at Dynatrace, said: "The glitch today is a perfect example of just how complex it is to make sure applications are working perfectly all the time, and just how public an outage can be for a business. These train companies are reliant on a convoluted IT delivery chain to give customers a great experience at the station - a fast, perfect ticket purchase.

"But a single purchase transaction is likely to require multiple integrations between third party software applications (credit card processing, security check, security certificate, the core operating application that the end user sees), and use 82 different types of technology (an operating system, wi-fi, JavaScript, servers, code, databases). When one small part fails, the whole chain is broken and the customer is left standing there frustrated.

"Even if the problem lies with a third party service like a payment gateway - the train company has to wear the public criticism. But that's why businesses need application performance monitoring that's powered by artificial intelligence, to pinpoint exactly where the problem is and resolve it immediately - within minutes not hours or days.”

Permit to travel machines were not affected by the outage. 

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