As a quick aside some unstaffed (or staffed at certain hours only) stations in England have Permit To Travel machines.
Quite robust machines. The intending passenger inserts whatever coins s/he has and a little card permit is issued stating amount paid, station name and time.
Passenger must then exchange the card permit for a ticket ASAP (within a maximum of 2 hours) and pay the balance of the fare due.
Whether a similar machine at certain stations here would have merit is hard to know. The ideal situation at all unstaffed stations is a ticket vending machine (TVM) but perhaps at a few locations due to low traffic/ antisocial behaviour (and maybe other reasons) a machine along these lines may be worth considering.
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