Best is to have a night in town every now and again.
Some people can sleep in the trains, others will be broken after a few days.
If you can sleep sitting up it will be less of a problem.
Try to get two seats facing each other, (two seats each is even better) and put your feet next to your friend and the other way round.
Stack your packs under your combined legs so you can rest them.
If you have two seats each, lay your top half on the seats and your legs across, just learn to live with the smell of feet near you face as your friend will need to put his somewhere there.
If you feel the cold, a thin sleeping bag might be useful, otherwise your coat or fleece will do.
Keep your real valuables in a pouch on your belly, under your clothes, (passport and InterRail card in a plastic cover or plastic bag, and the card you use to get your money out of the wall) and your money and such in a pocket of your jeans or in the pouch too.
Try to travel with as little luggage as you can, you will walk around a lot with your luggage, and you will find less left luggage places than you would hope for.
Two pairs of jeans each, and a pair of shorts, and some T-shirts, a sweater or two. And wash them when they get too dirty. Underwear to suit you, that does not take all that much space.
Also take just sample bottles of whatever you use for shampoo and deo and alike, better to buy a new sample bottle somewhere than carrying a full sized bottle that might leak.
You will find places to take showers at many of the main railway stations but you will often have to pay so much for them that is might be a better idea to go to a hostel every few days and shower (and wash your clothes) there.
When you have reserved seats on a rather crowded train, talk with the train staff and ask if there are other cars with more empty seats, but do check (on that car itself) that it does go where you want to go.
If you do not have reserved seats, walk along all of the train, see which cars go to your destination (or farther) and see if there are 'reserved seat' messages. They do not always work, but when there you can read to find a seat not reserved for your bit of the travel, or you can settle and find that at the next station someone comes in who has paid for that seat.
If you can afford it, a couchette is way better, you can lay down and will be able to get some sleep, on a long travel maybe even enough.
A sleep mask and earplugs can be needed, but you can also just buy them underway when it turns out you need them, in summer all big department stores will sell them.
Take a good guidebook, I like the Lonely Planet series.
Take the one that covers all your travels but not much more.
Europe on a shoestring is likely to cover it all, but if you are only going to the South, Southern Europe might be better and so on: http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/Primary/Pro鈥?/a>
Send yourself an e-mail with some useful links, (I leave a mail like that on my yahoo mail address at all times,) with your most used e-mail addresses and favorite links.
I use this German rail planner in English for most of my travels: http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/鈥?/a>
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