Perhaps, a la Virgin Trains air conditioning - the ticket machines
don't work when it gets hot.

Regular readers may remember (or may not, it wasn't *that* memorable) me
complainign some weeks ago about the lack of working ticket machines at
Stansted a few weeks ago.

Well Connex at London Bridge has Stanstead beat hands down.

Sunday morning I wished to travel to Strood in Kent. This had to do
with a hedge that I was going to trim but didn't, a lawn that I wasn't
going to cut but did, a trip to B&Q and my total failure to predicit
that I'd be barely 10 km from the place that had the highest temperature
ever recorded in the UK.

So, London Bridge.

HUGE queue at the booking office.

3 fast-ticket touch screen machines capable (in theory) of taking cards,
all on but out of order. Two of the older button select coin and notes
machines and another just on the concourse that should have been able to
sell me the appropriate ticket also all out of order. Oh, the A to
somewhere in the middle of the alphabet machine was semi-okay and I did
consider bying a ticket to Chatham but it would only take coins, not
notes, and I had no change.

No permit to travel machine that I could see.