I traveled by train around England (in many small hops, London to Newcastle to Carlisle to Portsmouth and back to London) and Germany (in a similar pattern but

I traveled by train around England (in many small hops, London to Newcastle to Carlisle to Portsmouth and back to London) and Germany (in a similar pattern but from Frankfurt to Berlin with a side trip north) and generally found British trains to be as reliable, more pleasant, and less crowded. Although to be fair in Germany I did have to plan my trips and in England I got the all-you-can-ride youth pass that just allowed me to hop on any train I wanted (flashpacking!). It's a pretty nice way to travel if you don't want to go outside of the network (as soon as I had to go somewhere without a train like Richmond castle or Hadrian wall it was kind of pain). Not sure I would want to commute like that though, unlike inter-city subways whatever trains I happened to take at rush our, in either country, were not so great.