Learn the lesson from the UK, who did privatisation first* and have witnessed things much worse than the current state of German trains (which are still *excellent* in comparison, and I say that as one who moved from the UK to Germany in 2018).
* or "harder", to the extent that German rail privatisation never went as far as in the UK. I understand there's a constitutional requirement here in Germany for government majority ownership of the rail system — I wish it were so in the UK
Yes, I find it difficult to understand why anyone old enough to remember what British Rail actually was (or capable of e.g. reading Wikipedia, to find out what it was), would like British Rail to be resurrected in anything like the form it had. It feels like pointless nostalgia most of the time; double arrows, rail blue, and jumpers for goalposts.
And like, if one's model for maintaining a system depends on having a sensible government in power, _regardless of which particular political party you think is least competent_ you are going to have a rail system being run incompetently at least half the time. That's also what we got with "privatisation", of course; why would we expect any different?
British rail was a joke before privatisation. Now the complaint is mainly around the cost of popular trains, and the performance of state run franchises like northern
Shortly after privatisation, the Conservatives who did it lost power; it was going "so well" that the Conservatives' own choice of advertising posters in 2001 included "You paid the tax so where are the trains?"*, an irony I remember well because I was into writing letters to the newspaper editor at the time and my letter about it was published.
The main joke (there have been many smaller ones) for the last ~ decade has been the Brighton-London route, and two decades ago my trains home from Aberystwyth were getting cancelled every time a few stops before the Birmingham, with people saying that was to avoid getting counted as late.
In the U.K. it’s grey, you can choose a service from London to Manchester that’s far faster than pre privatisation for a reasonable off peak fee, or you can choose a slower service with a change at crewe which costs far less than under British Rail and take about the same time (3h30)
Under nationalisation plans were afoot to close Marylebone, today Chiltern is one of the highest rated services going
We need to get essential services such as public transport back under state control or the quality will continue to deteriorate