Store 1 Element in array

Hi everyone I have a script to check to see if it can ping a list of IPs. If it cannot reach 1 it stores it in an array. The problem is if only 1 IP is stored in the array it treats each char as an element of that array. 

$psr = $PSScriptRoot
$a = Get-Content $psr\list.txt
$machines = @()

for($i=0;$i -lt $a.length;$i++){
    $key = $a[$i]
    $info = @()
    $info = -split $key
    $machines = $info[0]
}

#Start-Sleep -Seconds 60

for($j=0;$j -lt $machines.length;$j++){
    if(!(Test-Connection -ComputerName $machines[$j] -BufferSize 16 -Count 1 -ea 0 -quiet)){
        Write-Host $machines[$j]
    }else{
        Write-Host "All machines are awake"
    }
}

It happens in the second for loop list is just a snippet of the code. How can I write to host the full IP as 1 element?

Thanks