I HAD the same difficulty as Alan Randall buying train tickets on Southern Railway’s website (Letters, March 4) and gave up.

By contrast, I had no difficulty in buying a train ticket from Copenhagen to Stockholm on the Swedish Railways website and was even able to print out my own ticket.

Mr Randall’s letter was illustrated by a picture of one of British Rail’s Quickfare ticket machines, which took 15 seconds to issue a ticket.

These were replaced about five years ago with FastTicket machines, which take an average of two minutes and a dozen button presses. Nearly everyone seems to have trouble with them and the touch screens are unresponsive.

I have been complaining to Southern about them but nothing has been done.

There are machines in Europe where the process takes less than ten seconds. Why don’t we see them in Britain?

Henry Law, Queen’s Gardens, Brighton