Boarding a train without a ticket - really illegal?

I queued for over 10 mins at Picadilly for 1 of the only 2 machines there and when I got to the front the card reader was broken so I just bought on the train.

The queues for the ticket office were masssive and the queue from the machines blocked the concourse. This is the main issue with what is otherwise a very good station. It does not encourage advance ticket purchase though.

 

Put yourself in the position of the police officers who that day had seconds to make that decision to shoot believing they were facing another would be suicide bomber, not years of endless debate that have gone on since that day.
There's been an enquiry not charges have been brought against officers, image if the outcome was different a suicide bomber self detonates when challenged by armed officers would the out cry be "why did they not shoot" from armchair barristers.
Yes Jean Charles may well have been an innocent but sad fact is in war innocents do get killed & we are in a war regardless of who started it.

 

There are loads of machines at Piccadilly, two Virgin ones and a Northern one next to Delice de France (I think), one or two on the far right hand side of the ticket office, one up on the footbridge between platforms 13 and 14 (saved my bacon many a time when on a dead connection) and there are two at the bottom of the Metrolink escalators on the right hand side, they're so convenient when arriving in off the 147 (bus)