Maybe some perlmonk will wake up and explain it all

Yes, sooner or later randyk will come along. He has a pretty good understanding of ppm. I find (the recent versions of) PPM annoyingly opaque, and I consequently try to stand well clear. There's a somewhat more transparent version of PPM on CPAN but, of course, it doesn't provide the features that are available with PPM3 and PPM4. It won't work with zip files (and therefore the trouchelle rep) either, though I've submitted a patch to rt.cpan that I think addresses that issue.

I notice that my ppm search ConfigReader-Simple produced  Downloading ActiveState Package Repository packlist but there was no corresponding action for the trouchelle rep. Therein, perhaps, lies the reason that you're still getting reports of 1.24 (instead of 1.25).

Cheers,
Rob