Most trains did arrive a few hours late in the end. I remember on one train from Prague to Cologne, the train had to sit outside a station for multiple hours while two passengers argued outside(?) and the train staff waited for police at ~midnight.
That's one thing I wish the EU really did better - do more to integrate and de-federate the rail systems. There should be no major difference riding the rails in any state. Of course, this is a lofty goal since even within countries usually commuter transport is run by local companies and not even nationally interoperable.
I'm doing Paris <=> Wien, and it was financially competitive to airplanes. 100€/person/way (ok cheapest seat rate, that's probably very uncomfortable... I'll see) I had 240€/person/2 way with airplanes. I just checked airplane prices again and that's still pretty much the same prices (a bit lower than train if you accept going to the FarAwayAirport, much higher if you take the Airport on a train/subway station)
It does take a lot more time because it's one train every 2 day and arrives a bit late to do train => home => workplace, so if you value being where you want to be when you want to be, you could probably say that airplanes is more competitive)
Though supposedly theft is a greater issue on night trains than flights, so I was apprehensive to sleep..
(It was also the last train of the day that would get us to our destination. Ultimately we got a nice story out of it. But it still smarts.)
High-speed rail became dominant in the next decade and I think it was the cynical kind of of ‘competition’ that if there is an affordable option and an astronomically expensive option (HSR is often 2x or 3x the cost of flying) why should the provider offer the affordable one? (It’s like how a car dealer has no M or L cars but they have rows and rows of unsold XL, XXL, and XXXL SUVs)
They passed a bunch of rules requiring the separation of the track ownership from the train ownership which means any private company can come in, lease some track time, lease some trains, and become a train operator overnight.
Similar rule changes have led to tremendous improvements in Italy for example, which had the unfortunate (?) side effect of bankrupting the national plane carrier Alitalia (not sure if it’s really unfortunate considering it was heavily subsidized by the govt, much like plane travel throughout the world, where govts inevitably subsidize plane travel by bailing out plane companies on a regular basis, and even the companies that don’t need bailing out benefit because they share costs with highly unprofitable companies essentially running on govt bailouts).
During the return journey we got our private berth, but had a rather lengthy delay at Salzburg waiting for several other services (from Venice etc) to join ours, then had to stop again just over the border for the Polizei to inspect our passports at 5AM – started to get a little anxious that we were going to miss our connection and the whole house of cards was going to come down.
Similar to others, I was woken at Salzburg by shouts of people on the platform. I heard whistles as I presume the authorities dealt with folks boarding on the train who weren't supposed to…
That said, overall a good experience, and would happily use the service again.
My only recommendation is not to take one if you absolutely must arrive at the stated time in the morning. They are commonly delayed by multiple hours. So far this has not been a problem for me because the stated arrival times are really early morning. But worth being aware of.