Getting off the train at HOP earlier this evening I overheard the following conversation as I climbed the wooden stairs - we've had a bottleneck since they closed the side exit about 5 years ago. Anyway, I paraphrase slightly, but it went something like this:
"Why are you getting off here? You don't live here."
"Yeah, but there's ticket barriers at Forest Hill and Sydenham now and I don't want to get caught..."
Aside from the fact that it doesn't take a criminal genius to carry on fare-dodging when Southern only bother to secure small parts of the route, this does show that the ticket machines will eventually work to help get to the point where everyone's paying for their journey, hopefully - or maybe the trains will just get a little bit quieter.