As for Poland, I think PKP gets a bad rap but they shouldn't.
A lot of their problems are caused by national and provincial governments, not by themselves. For example -
'Gifting' Przewozy Regionalne to the provinces when the provinces didn't want it was exceptionally stupid, particularly as the richer provincial governments would rather fund their own services than into the mess of debt that is Przewozy Regionalne. They paid off the debts with the transfer, but did absolutely nothing about the reason *why* PR was in such trouble to begin with.
Allowing PKP Intercity and Przewozy Regionalne to compete is absolutely nonsense at the highest level.
When PKP was split into the thousands of companies, not ensuring a unified ticket system was one of the more interesting disasters - of course PR and Intercity are not going to collaborate if they don't have to!
The transfer of the Posp. trains last winter was another disaster - Intercity didn't want them and pretty quickly cut many of the services. Intercity should've stayed firmly a reservation-only operator - but did the relevant Ministry listen? No!
I could go on - but it's clear to me that weak government, not bad management is the problem.
Incidentally, IC trains are an absolute dream in Poland - uncrowded, comfortable and fairly quick!