There is more than one way to commit fraud and, for some rail travellers, it has been as simple as a couple of taps on their phone as their train approaches its destination.

That telltale last-minute purchase of a digital ticket – for the shortest journey that will allow them to bleep through the gates, regardless of how far they have travelled – is one of a number of illegal wheezes that train operators are trying to eliminate, with the enthusiastic backing of the government department that will directly oversee most of England’s rail services when they are renationalised next year.

Two rail companies, South Western Railway (SWR) and GTR, which operates Thameslink, Southern and other services, this week introduced measures to clamp down on “short-faring” – a trick by which passengers buy a last-minute digital ticket only for the final part of their journey, even if they boarded in a station without barriers much further away.

Don’t bother trying to download a digital ticket from Vauxhall to Waterloo, the terminus for many trains to London from the west – or on a number of other routes, apparently including from Norwood Junction to London Bridge, where many services from the south coast hit the capital. For those and some other routes, you will now need to collect a physical ticket from a physical ticket machine, after operators found that up to 95% of tickets on some short routes were being used fraudulently.

Fare evasion on Britain’s railways did not begin with digitisation – you don’t need a QR code to vault a barrier or hide in the toilet from a ticket inspector. But the increasing reliance on digital ticketing has widened some of the loopholes for those minded to cheat – and added to an ever-growing problem for train companies.

Up to £400m is lost to fraud each year on the rail network, according to the Department for Transport, through high-tech and decidedly low-tech methods. As well as short-faring, operators point to “quick scanning” (buying a ticket on your phone seconds before being approached by an inspector), “tailgating” (squeezing behind a paying customer as they pass through a ticket gate) and “donutting”, a scam by which a passenger buys a cheap ticket covering the first part of their journey and another covering the last, but avoids paying the higher cost of the full trip. A former senior executive at HSBC, Joseph Molloy, received a suspended sentence earlier this year for using this technique 740 times to commute between Orpington in Kent and London Bridge, saving him £5,911 over 11 months.

“It’s quite a big problem, because we’re coming to terms with a completely different form of ticketing,” said the railway commentator and author Christian Wolmar. “No longer do you go to the ticket office and buy little red and yellow cards. You now buy online, and that affords these new opportunities. The system is clearly open to abuse.”

Though a push to reduce staff numbers has been a factor, he says, “how you tackle this is very difficult because you can’t have guards at every stop. It’s through digital analysis that they are going to find a solution to this.”

The government appears to agree, widening the introduction earlier this month of an app that calculates ticket fares by tracking the user’s phone. While currently being trialled on a number of routes in the East Midlands and Yorkshire, the technology could eventually be brought in across Great British Railways, the public body that will take over the running of the soon-to-be renationalised network, expected to be up and running next year.

“Fare evasion is illegal and selfish – it actively makes journeys worse for all rail passengers by diverting money that could otherwise be used to improve services,” said the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. “We are committed to tackling ticket cheats, and that’s one of the expected benefits of expanding our digital ticketing app to more people across the trial areas.”

Her department has also recently given £33m for new or enhanced ticket gates at “fare dodger hotspots” across England, and has closed a loophole that allowed some passengers to dishonestly claim a refund even though they had used a service.

SWR said its introduction of new anti-fraud measures came after one intervention at Brighton station found that half of those travelling on the wrong ticket were using the short-faring scam.

To passengers disembarking at the station on Friday morning, a clampdown on cheats was very welcome. “Obviously fares go up anyway because of inflation, but they are probably pushing up our fares as well, so we all suffer,” said Deanna Smith, who had travelled on Thameslink with her partner to visit a coffee festival. “It’s just like tax dodging – we all fall victim to their behaviour.”

Nicola Garrett, who was on a day trip to Brighton with a friend from her home town of Leigh-on-Sea, said: “I’m someone who has always paid for everything, so I get a bit pissed off [by fare dodging]. Nobody seems to think that they have to pay for anything these days. It’s just like, if you can get away with doing it, why wouldn’t you?”

Re your article on travel etiquette (The ultimate guide to travel etiquette: how to handle 36 tricky situations, from manspreaders to smelly armpits, 4 August), it’s totally wrong to advise people not to give up seats for a woman any more. Women could be menstruating, in the first trimester of pregnancy (the most exhausting time, and not one you advertise with badges saying “Baby on board”), perimenopausal, menopausal or have endometriosis (excruciating pain). Women live with a level of pain and discomfort as routine, for much of their lives. Yes, of course men can be suffering with specific ailments at specific times, but it is not part and parcel of being a man. Gentlemen, please just do it.
Helen Walker
London

To your list of dubious travel behaviours, I’d like to add constant sniffing and its more guttural and nauseating relation, snorting. It seems that handkerchiefs, tissues and even the concept of blowing your nose have gone out of fashion. I am frequently nauseated by this on planes and trains, and if I don’t have headphones with me I have to resort to blocking my ears. I have not yet had the courage to speak to a culprit (although I have often been tempted to pass them a tissue).
Judith Milburn
Hartlepool, County Durham

I enjoyed your guide to travel etiquette. It was very sensible and reflective of our modern society. I had to smile at the guidance for offering your seat to elderly people – as a man in my mid-50s who is (happily) fit and healthy, I always have to remind myself that people offering me a seat aren’t commenting on my physical state, they are just being kind to a stranger.

Given the increasing incidence of harassment on public transport, particularly of women, it might be helpful to give some guidance as to what to do if you see someone being harassed – that’s a tricky balance of ensuring the safety of yourself and those around you, but it is (sadly) a reflection of the times.

However, you didn’t go into enough detail about one of my biggest bugbears – people who insist on keeping their backpacks on on crowded buses and tubes where standing space is at a premium. It’s frustrating, and occasionally very problematic, when people aren’t aware that the space they’re taking up by keeping the backpack on is much larger than their unencumbered body. As they move or turn they bump into whatever you’re holding, and it reduces the opportunity for others to join the service.

It’s a simple rule: take the backpack off and have it at your feet – always – to avoid encroaching on other people’s personal space and to free up space for others. Or maybe my middle-aged grumpiness is just getting the better of me on this one.
Peter Antolik
London

Recently, after a three day-visit to London, I returned home to Devon and jokingly complained that Londoners constantly made me feel old. Every journey I made on public transport, someone offered me a seat. On two occasions a woman offered me a helping hand as I descended the stairs on a bus. I am a six-foot, healthy 80-year-old and can easily manage to stand for a short journey but, as my wife pointed out, it is much nicer to smile and accept the offers. On another bus, a woman offered to move so that my wife and I could sit together. In conclusion, I felt I should point out that Londoners, in my experience, do not really need much of your advice. They already have an embarrassment of politeness riches and made me feel much happier about the human race.
Paul Wesley
Totnes, Devon

Rail passengers are facing a second day of travel disruption across parts of north-west England, after a power failure hit the signalling centre controlling the railway in the region.

The power failure, which occurred shortly before 2pm on Thursday, triggered widespread cancellations and delays to services including CrossCountry and London Northwestern Railway.

Operators whose services continued to be affected on Friday morning were Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE) and Transport for Wales.

National Rail said this morning that although trains are now able to operate, there could be delays until noon as several trains and crew are in the wrong locations for the start of service today.

“This means that some trains are still expected to be affected this morning. Trains across the Greater Manchester area and north-west of England may still be cancelled in full or revised to only run for part of their normal journey until service is able to fully recover,” it said.

Northern Rail has advised passengers not to travel before 10am today. TPE has told its passengers should prepare for disruption before midday today, with delays and cancellations to be expected.

Greater Manchester, the Midlands and north-west England were hit the hardest by the rail disruption, with thousands of passengers unable to complete their journeys.

The facility in Manchester that experienced the outage was one of 12 operating centres designed to eventually manage the entire British rail network, Network Rail said when it opened in 2014.

A wartime bomb was also discovered near the railway between Tamworth and Burton-on-Trent, which deepened disruption on Thursday, National Rail said.

Chris Wright, Network Rail’s north-west route director, said: “I’d like to thank passengers for their patience after yesterday’s power outage and the disruption it caused across the north-west.

“Our engineers worked through the night to restore signalling systems and recover the railway, and I’m pleased that most services are now running this morning.

“While some passengers may still experience disruption, we’re continuing to work closely with train operators to return services to normal as quickly as possible. Anyone planning to travel this morning should continue to check before they travel for the latest information.”

Andy Bowes-Roden, deputy editor at Modern Railways magazine, told BBC Radio 5 Live there would be “quite a lot of disruption this morning easing throughout the day”.

“Hopefully by rush hour the service will be back to normal, but it won’t be until tomorrow morning that this will be sorted,” he said. “As rail passengers, we are lucky. We have protections and the railways are obliged to get us where they promise to get us. But there will be an awful lot of refunds.”