@goatsarah have they always been that way, & just had better PR in the past?
(My token experience is that at least British rail service has gone downhill in recent years. We were in England/Scotland for our honeymoon c2007, then again for a conference in 2019, & took a train north from London both times (Edinburgh in '07, York in '09, so same line). In just those 12 years, the experience degraded really strikingly.)