It's crap.

At least, in my opinion --- I live in Switzerland now, so my standards are... different. But, basically, overpriced, unreliable, dirty, and slow. The only places where the train system actually works well is the south-east of England, where it's horribly expensive. I used to live in Reading; a peak time day return into London, which is maybe half an hour a way, costs about £40.

Bear in mind that I know perfectly well that Britain's rail network is amazing compared to, say, America or eastern Europe. But the local perception of it is that it's bad. (Not helped by several rounds of botched privatisation, too.)

Incidentally, I'd love to know how to get from Ireland to Great Britain by train. Do they float?

As a French who lives in London, my limited experience (London - Brighton mostly) is that they're fine, reliable, and cheaper than the French TGV (which is generally awesome and uncomparably faster, but ridiculously expensive)

I have a feeling the question might be linked to some common myths about the UK being spread by the French left for ages (evil privatized Thatcherite trains crashing into each other, third-world healthcare with people dying in droves in hospital corridors, etc). Right ? :)

What standard(s) are you asking about here? Other modes of transport? Our rail system from 20 years ago? Similar services in other European nations? I’d say our rail system is probably significantly better than it was 20 years ago. For some journeys I would almost always choose rail travel while for others I would hardly even consider it, usually as a result of cost or timing — how direct a route you can choose and the convenience of the connections makes a huge difference in our system.

As for comparisons with our European neighbours, there was some interesting discussion a week or so ago about how international rail within Europe works (or, sometimes, does not work yet). I added some comments there about a recent experience travelling between the UK and the Netherlands by train:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9631874

The short version is that international rail travel within continental Europe (well, Schengen really) seems to be much less hassle than travelling to or from the UK by train.

Overpriced. Overcrowded. Unclean. Cramped. Occasionally unreliable. We don't have any high speed rail apart from the link to Paris, but our standard intercity trains have connected most major cities at 200kph since the 1970's which is faster than conventional rail in Europe. TGV style High speed lines are a real pain to build in the UK because of the high population density of the countryside coupled with the extensive and laborious public consultations required. We don't have Alps but we do have quite a lot hills between the main cities. Once the route has taken account of all these concerns there are often not many parts where the trains will go at full speed. This is why the new HS2 route will only save 15mins off the time from London to Birmingham.

I'm French, I was in St Pancras / Margate / Brighton last summer and they have new lines, one of them called The Javelin, it's extremely fast, on time, reliable, so I'd say they've made tremendous progress.

Expensive (London to Manchester 80 pounds, composed to 15 by coach), mostly always delayed and not getting any better apart from the two or so lines Virgin runs which are super nice (but which are very expensive).

France's trains seem futuristic in comparison.

Germany's are super puctural and great value.

Germany's nationalised rail company, DB, who now own Arriva, are servicing some of UK's lines, I see now. The private UK system is helping to fund the puplic German system, heh.

It's expensive, terrible, and frequently overcrowded, but at least it's not as outdated as it used to be.

Having travelled by train in other European countries, I'd say it is actually very good. It connects more places than most countries, buying tickets is easy, trains are frequent.

The downside is that is it is phenomenally expensive. Far more than any other country. Yeay privatisation?

It's very expensive, but services are amazingly frequent compared to on the continent, with multiple trains per hour been major cities. There's little compassion from the Staff of there's a problem, since everything's privatised.

Well, we love our heritage steam railways.