I think the core issue is that the rail operator (gov) for whatever reason wants these last-minute tickets to be available at an artificially low ticket price.

That’s not what airlines are trying to do. Trying to build a system that works with the natural effects of markets is much easier than creating a system that works against market forces.

Look at the Ticketmaster experience for popular concerts and sports tickets. Waiting rooms and bugs and software workarounds/hacks, all because it’s a raffle for tickets being sold below what the free market price would be.

This does not appear to be a primarily technical problem. If these tickets sell out in 10 minutes, creating a better technical solution to let them sell out in 2 minutes isn’t actually improving anything meaningful.