> Almost everywhere I the world railways are state owned and heavily subsidised and still aren’t that attractive to customers.

That's a remnant of the past, where only a nation state could afford massive projects such as creating a railway line crisscrossing throughout a massive country.

Since the last couple of decades we see private companies investing in railway lines, including high-speed railway corridors. We also see a major liberalization push in Europe to decouple railway operators from infrastructure maintainers, and now there are plenty of private companies operating railway services across the world. In Spain alone there are 2 or 4 private companies providing high-speed railway connections between major urban centers.