Scheduling trains is a complex problem involving many parameters, but the public see only one facet of it: is my train delayed or not?
Of course delays depend on budget and investments, and bureaucracy.
But not only.
For instance, comparing high speed trains in Germany and France can give the impression that German trains are ineficient and slow, but Germany being a much less centralized country, which is good, trains have to make many more stops, oftentimes leading to more complex scheduling and not being able to reach the top speed between stops, and thus less time to catch up on small delays.
Similarly, there are different policies regarding international trains vs national trains, or freight vs passenger, and also different variables they can optimize for: number of delays, total duration of delays, availability of emergency paths, etc, and various policies will yield different sentiment regarding "is my train on time".
You are trying to add a lot of nuance to a topic which is just not very nuanced. Trains in germany are a nightmare because of decades of mismanagement. All the rest is copium, as the kids say.
Maybe, but there are some things that, when they do not work, easily give the impression that someone somewhere hasn't done his job properly, because it looks simple and easy from the point of view of the user but in reality are quite complex. Having met a few people working in this field in the past, I have the impression train networks are like that.
Same as buggy front-end dev for non-technical people, for instance. :)
Or maybe they didn't do their job properly. I remember a few years ago when new train cars were introduced in Hamburg the new models broke down constantly because of problems with software and broken springs. Supposedly because the designers forgot to account for the weight of passengers.
Of course delays depend on budget and investments, and bureaucracy.
But not only. For instance, comparing high speed trains in Germany and France can give the impression that German trains are ineficient and slow, but Germany being a much less centralized country, which is good, trains have to make many more stops, oftentimes leading to more complex scheduling and not being able to reach the top speed between stops, and thus less time to catch up on small delays.
Similarly, there are different policies regarding international trains vs national trains, or freight vs passenger, and also different variables they can optimize for: number of delays, total duration of delays, availability of emergency paths, etc, and various policies will yield different sentiment regarding "is my train on time".
A document that gives an overview of the variety of policies across Europe: https://rne.eu/wp-content/uploads/RNE_OverviewOfthePriorityR...