Ticket Machines Again

On the back of a free magazine the other day I spotted this ad from our friends at Irish Rail.. The text reads "Queuing for a ticket may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the arrival of new automatic ticket machines." Thats some boast. It was only a couple of years ago that they installed the current free standing machines (which, in one station, they've just put directly front of the glass for the original ticket desk) that are just horrible to use; often they won't give change, they take ages to actually print the ticket you've selected, and you have to be careful not to put your change in too fast or it won't fall into the machine properly!! Not to mention the crappy touch screen interface. They cause plenty of queues and I don't want to guess at how expensive they are. Ticket machines are a fairly standard piece of equipment in modern train stations aren't they? So why weren't they able to get it right first time around! In the picture below, the machine is actually out of order..