Rail ticket glitch hits thousands

THOUSANDS of passengers were unable to collect their pre-paid train tickets from machines at stations across the UK during rush hour yesterday due to a nationwide system failure.

The problem affected many of the biggest train operators. Photographs online showed touch-screen ticket machines with the collection button greyed out.

Passengers were told to use ticket offices or show email booking confirmation at barriers. The glitch was blamed on the failure of central IT servers to connect to the machines.