Someone posted statistics on european and asian rail passenger levels here at FR not long ago - I was shocked at how low the figures were for the number of rail trips the average citizen of those areas took each year. Rail accounts for very low percentages of intercity travel, and those percentages have been declining for decades.
As far as the fares go, that's the point, isn't it? You raise fares enough to cover operating costs and an intercity train trip costs 10-20 times what an equivalent trip in an airliner costs.
Texas is about the size of France but with more arable land.
UK comes in toward Illinois.
Imagine stuffing 70 million people into Indiana and Ohio ~ trains happen.
I think it's an error to even think about inter city travel in Europe by air ~ makes me laugh imagining flying from Rhine-Mein to Nurnburg ~ no need to pull the wheels up eh.