Ghost train.

[gpapag]

Austrian and German railroads have a timely executed schedule.
Italians too on their high speed trains

George

 

[Bonsai]

As a corporate advisor, I would have changed the schedule but not alerted the staff. All trains on time now.

No problem . . . They would then have got those times wrong by returning to the original time table 😀

Seriously, if you want to know how not to run a rail system, come here. Trains running to their own time table and not the published one is a great British institution.

I don't think it has anything to do with privatization or industry structure. Its just the way it is. I don't have the answers, and it seems no one else does either. Even in China the services ran quite well - I took the Shanghai to Beijing bullet train a few times and it was quite good.