Railways were a public service in Europe. Profit was not a goal. Trains were not that full often, so carrying a few youth did not make a difference.
Nowadays they all have some kind of business thinking (how successfully is a different story). Long distance trains in France and Germany at least have lots of business travellers. So they don't want backpackers travelling a lot and paying little.
Maybe we should lobby for subsidies in EU context. They even had some free tickets for 18 year olds some years ago, so they might understand the usefulness. Doesn't need to be free, but at least better prices and conditions than currently.
They still do: https://europa.eu/youth/discovereu_en
I think a lot of people have the fantasy that they'd turn up in a train station somewhere and just jump on the train to Paris, or Amsterdam, or Berlin, or Barcelona or what have you. The reality is that all of those trains are high speed and require reservations, and those reservations sell out or increase in price if you want to get them last minute. If you do want to live that experience you'll be better served by a truly unlimited national pass, or something like France's Carte Jeune, which is a discount card currently available for 25€, and provides solid discounts on French and some international trains.
Now, if you don't care about exactly how you get somewhere, or how fast you're going, and you'll be visiting 20 countries and you don't want to mess with 20 different discount cards and train websites in different languages, then Interrail/Eurail is perfect for you. You'll pay a moderate premium over what you'd pay with a pile of discount cards or subscriptions, but it'll save you a world of complexity. You won't be able to just step onto the train Amsterdam to Paris, but you can step on the train to Antwerp, from there to Lille, Lille to Amiens, Amiens to Paris. In a way, that's also more true to the style of old Interrail many remember from the 70s-80s, before high speed international trains even existed.
That will cost time, though. Some routes are the same speed or similar with regional or high speed trains (41 minutes vs 1:10 for Amsterdam-Rotterdam, 1:58 vs 2:14 for Antwerp-Lille etc), some routes are short enough it doesn't matter much, but a lot of the longer distances will take a while to cross. Crossing the 1000km of France will take you at least an entire full day of slower train travel, while the TGV will take you from Paris to Marseille in 3 hours, 4:30 from Lille to Marseille.
If you want to see how much you'd spend in reservation fees with an Interrail/Eurail pass, this is the page: https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/reservations/rese...
[0] https://www.interrail.eu/en/plan-your-trip/reservations/rese...
If you do want a last minute ICE, then your best bet is the German Rail Pass, which has the unique ability to let you take any German train at any time, including ICEs, with zero reservations. A powerful pass, a bit pricey though (cheapest pass is 3 consecutive days for 1 youth, 139 eur, up to 15 nonconsecutive days in 1 month for 1 youth, 369 eur)
So, I'm not sure about the situation north(west) of the Netherlands, but for anything south or east of the Netherlands Interrail isn't super cost effective.
Thanks a bunch for the tip about non-London places in the UK! That's a golden tip, because train prices inside the UK are really extortionate. I'm trying to figure out if that only applies to the global pass, it looks like the Eurostar discount applies to other passes also, but presumably not the free booking on through the UK:
"Please note that journeys with Eurostar require a compulsory seat reservation and must be booked in advance. If you hold an Interrail Global or Interrail One Country - France, Great Britain or Benelux Pass you are entited to a special Passholder Rate. Simply contact Eurostar directly on 01233 617 575 to reserve (...and when booking, remember to tell them you have an Interrail Pass so you are given the Passholder rate!)"
I wonder if it applies to the Britrail pass? Britrail seems to be far cheaper than Interrail, 57 eur for a youth pass for consecutive 2 days...
Otherwise, the plain Interrail Great Britain pass starts at €166 for 3 days, and the Interrail Global pass €185 for 4 days within 1 month.
If you've got kids coming of age looking for something cool to do, I highly recommend this, I think it was formative and really filled in some blanks in my head, growing up in a super rich country obviously doesn't give you a particularly complete view of the world. On the way we met kids from the states and canada as well that I suppose were on eurail passes.
This was 15 years ago, I've been told it's no longer attractive to do the 1-month pass. I worked a simple data entry job after high school to save up for it. I'd recommend sponsoring the ticket for your kid if you can! I think restricting the budget was also a good idea, for us it was all we could afford, but it forced us to look for cheap spots, we only camped maybe 4 days in the whole month, in countries like hungary and romania it turned out the difference between camping and staying in a cabin was like 2 euro per night.
edit: they actually reintroduced the 1 month free travel pass, it's 500 euro so not that much more expensive.