The problem is that railway transport is under pressure and threatened from many sides: (partly legal) intercity bus services, low cost airlines, cheap cars, automatic cars etc.
In my home country Denmark only around 7 percent of the passenger-kilometers is transported by rail.
It takes huge taxpayer subsidizes to even maintain that level. The state funds
1. the rail infrastructure,
2. purchase of rolling stock
3. half of the operation costs
4. the absence of VAT on railway tickets.
Then something's surely rotten in the state of railways in Denmark... ;)