Train stations

Yes, I know it sounds like an odd post for an aspiring Fantasy author, but hear me out.
   
A long time ago I took a trip around Europe.  For three weeks I traversed England, France, and Germany (taking a step or three into Scotland and Switzerland), mostly by train.  Yes, I only had a backpack.  No, I didn't spend much time in my tent, but I was happy to have it on a couple of occasions.  To get back on point, in that time, I noticed that there seemed to be an almost national character about each country's rail system.  It's quite possible that memory has played tricks, or that I layered my preconceived notions onto my observations, but whenever you have a national system (In your world), the character of that nation can be implied by the physical manifestation of that system.
    The English rail system seemed picturesque.  The buildings seemed to be constructed out of storybooks, with flower filled window-boxes and rustic touches.  One of my trains was followed by a helicopter, aparently shooting a documentary about scenic train trips (at least i think that was a camera mount).  Everything seemd very carefully controlled, even if the trains didn't always run on schedule.  What really seemed to tell though, was the layers of paint visible on the metalwork.  The joint between the beams and the rivets was hidden under generations of upkeep.  It was like the country as a whole was consciously and collectively trying to hold on to some ideal history and the paint might be the only thing holding it together.
    France was a very different story.  It seemed to be more about faded glory.  Stone and plaster were crumbling.  The paint was chipped and fading.  Steel showed trails of rust.  The stations were open and airy, with the sense that they used to be somehow more full, of people and life.  Maybe they had sold some of the old furnishings.  There was little to keep you from wandering across the tracks, the ones with the flowering weeds sprouted between the ties.  Trains ran... Unless the workers were on strike.
     Germany served as a clear contrast to the others.  Germany's railways were clean and modern, all glass and steel.  Clear signage pointed you where you needed to go and the trains always seemed to run on time.  Like in the US, trains are a means to an end, not a symbol of the past.  The past isn't important anyway, right?
    More recently I spent a few years living in the Czech Republic.  While Prague has some nice stations, most of the outlying towns and cities are not so lucky.  Most of the trains have paint faded in the sun, from being in service for so long.  Stations tend to be concrete boxes, with some severe wooden benches where you can sit while you hope your train will some day arrive.  Some of these stations did have pretty great Soviet style murals on the interiors, or old metal symbols on the exterior.  When I worked in Kladno, I'd frequently walk the tracks for a half mile or so into the station as a shortcut.  The Czechs seem to generally support your freedom to get yourself killed.
    Brazil didn't have much of a train system that I saw.  There was a subway, of sorts, in Brasilia and one in Rio, but they didn't go very far.  Busses were the main way I got around in Brasil.  They tell me that there was a schedule.  They posted departure time at Rodoviario Plano Pilota and the Rodoviario in Sudoeste (though Sudoeste's were printed on paper and taped to the pillar by the appropriate bus position), but these were suggestions at best.  Bus shelters were usually just a curl of concrete or a cinder block wall with a tin roof to protect you from the rain.  They didn't even tell you the bus line servicing the shelters, much less when you could expect the next one, though people in Brasilia tended to leave old books in the shelters, so at least you wouldn't be bored while you waited, even if the maps in them were 20 years out of date.
     All of these are simple examples of detail which differentiate one country from another. I could go on for pages about the peculiarities of these institutions.  Other examples are things like the postal service, or healthcare.  How they impact your characters, like in Kafka's The Castle, will speak to the national psyche.  The presence, or lack, or these institutions may also be telling.  It is these kinds of touches that can help give depth to your world without requiring a ten page info dump.