Trains are ridiculously expensive in UK as well, and the stupid unions are always on stirke even though they're well paid. I don't think I've been on the trains in France so can't comment unfortunately.
Rauns in German, my recent trip were a bit cheaper than UK. Especially when I found they did all day group tickets for 4 people which covered all public transport apart from intercity fast trains but that wasn't too big a problem for us.
I enjoy train travels as I'm so lazy in driving but like you say, it can be quite expensive, sadly
Yeah they went on strike a lot in France as well and the trains were often delayed or cancelled on a normal day which was a huge pain in the ass as well. I love passive travel as well to be able to sleep or read or do whatever on a train instead of driving. I would even pay a little more to get somewhere quicker. I just hated that it would be 7 hours and €150 all in to drive to a place or €350 and 7.5 hrs (or up to 10 hrs in bad cases where transfers are involved) to take the train, plus we would lose the entire day to travel because we couldn't leave super early in the morning and then we wouldn't have a car at our destination. We just couldn't make it work in most cases.
That being said the train system in Canada is absolute shit to non-existent. No interconnected system and the one train line that heads into Toronto is super expensive and extremely slow. It's garbage.