I was told to purchase from the excess fares / tiny ticket office thing inside the barrier line. I imagine others will also be doing so.
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All Northern self-service ticket machines off line 13/7/2021
- Thread starter Killingworth
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At where please? Sounds a bit like Leeds.
Killingworth
Established Member
Dore & Totley machine now fully operational.
Except that Northern have a bit of a habit of playing the 'helpless' card. There's a mindset that they really need to shift.
oddiesjack
Member
Machine on Chinley Station now working again. Still useless if one wants a wayfarer ticket, though!
This was Manchester Victoria. There were no working ticket machines, the main ticket office was completely shut and nobody on the barriers had a portable ticket machine. Quite daft, really.
Djminisite06
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Each machine needs a new hard drive installing, then rebuilding by the software team
What's it done to the hard drives? (I would assume these are SSDs given that the machines are relatively recent?)
py_megapixel
Established Member
Seems like they could just put an appropriate image onto the hard drives before sending them out to be fitted, that way the machine can boot into whatever operating system already properly configured? I must be missing something here.
Yes, I'd have thought that ought to be possible too, assuming the machines all have the same hard drive controller (and I would expect that they are built to a standard design).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I don't know but HDs are cheaper and it's not like these will be getting bashed about like a laptop.
AlexNL
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That depends on how the devices are initially set-up, and the process chosen by the vendor. It's very well possible that the machines run on Windows 10 (LTSC probably) and get provisioned via Windows Autopilot. With Autopilot, a vendor ships an "empty" device to the customer, who then configures it on-site (set up internet connection details, log in) and the rest of the provisioning then happens over the internet.
True, could be done like that - but the drive would need a clean Windows install on it (which could be done off-site), then the deployment should be fairly quick, assuming a reasonable internet connection. I would assume those machines will just have a tight configuration profile, plus minimal software install (ticketing software plus possibly something for remote management).
That's assuming they are running Windows 10 - if not then they win't be using Intune / Autopilot. When the machines were new I saw one being set up and they were running Windows 8 - which may or may not still be the case.
Djminisite06
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I also suspect things like “this is ticket machine xxx at xxx station, this is how I connect to the internet and the back office” would need to be configured uniquely too, additionally for the size of the operation it might be easier to send generic drives that can go in any machine - that way if one installer is ill for example work can be rebalanced
They tend to last a lot longer (both in terms of number of writes, and actual calendar time before data starts to decay) than Solid State Drives too, especially if you pick the ones that are specifically designed for always-on running (cheaper ones for “home and office Network Attached Storage”, more expensive for “Data Centre”
(though I imagine the duty cycle in a ticket machine isn't very arduous so it almost certainly doesn't really matter, just using a cheap consumer Hard Disc Drive would be fine, even those tend to last decades in my experience … although given the temperature extremes that outdoor Ticket Vending Machines are exposed to, there might be some special ruggedness considerations there, to keep hardware operating within specifications, which would lead them to be a bit more expensive)).
py_megapixel
Established Member
Umm... you buy from a member of staff, or if one is not available at any point on your journey, not at all.
In reality no passengers are disadvantaged by this unless guards or revenue inspectors choose to be over-officious.
Yeah, but given that Manchester Victoria is one of Northern's key stations, it's all a bit rubbish.
mike57
Established Member
The fact that hard drives are having to be replaced points to an attack which targets something like the boot sector, which cannot be repaired by just reinstalling the operating system. That in turn points to a fairly sophisticated attack. One would hope that they learn from the experience and change their architecture to reduce the attack surface of the system. My experience with other industries is that the bean counters insist on the cheapest solution and then try and blame the engineers when it all goes to hell in a handcart. You can then play the I told you so card if like me you retain 'critical' communication of the issues to those who dont want to listen, but of course by then the damage is done. Reliance on outsourcing is another issue, as the company delivering the service will attempt to deliver it as cheaply as possible while staying within the letter (but not always the spirit) of the contract. A good in house team will attempt to deliver the best solution with in the budget.
DanNCL
Established Member
The TVMs at Prudhoe are working again. The TVMs at Hexham and Metrocentre remain out of action.
Rhinojerry
Member
The machine at Bamber Bridge was working late last night,i was watching the Brewery Junction track panel train roll thru.
Britannia94
Member
Saw an engineer at todmorden today whilst I was waiting for a train, looked like he was replacing something within the machines.
I find them quite buggy actually. The one at my local station is frequently not working, or doesn't respond to touching the screen, or is frozen.There's very little wrong with the Scheidt & Bachmann machines, so if they could pick those...
If you ring the number displayed on the machine for support, you get connected (eventually) to NRE in India, who haven't a clue what you're banging on about.
Once it was frozen in some way but not completely, and I managed to get the on screen "Help" button to work. That connected me to a very helpful person in a Greater Anglia office somewhere who told me to reboot the machine by doing something with the card keypad (alas I can't recall what now), and the machine then worked.
They also struggle with anything more complex than selling a ticket from that station on that day.
I once managed to fathom the UI to buy a ticket valid from a different station in a day in the future, only for it to crash and reboot itself at a particular point in the process. I wasn't in a hurry so started again, with the exact same result.
Surely you can ( unless the ticket office is open) - or do the machines sell all locally valid rovers and rangers?
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