How much does it cost to take the train between Britain’s two biggest cities? Simple answers to such questions are elusive. It could be as much as £98.50 (the 06:10 from London Euston to Birmingham New Street, booked for tomorrow on Avanti). It could also be as little as £6.40 (the 13:36pm from Marylebone to Snow Hill, booked several weeks in advance through Chiltern Railways).

On measures ranging from punctuality to the wi-fi signal, Britain’s trains get a bad rap — but is the price another problem? You can book a flight to New York (for next year at a time nobody wants to travel, if you are happy to forgo meals and dignity) for less than the most expensive fare between London and Manchester. But, like for like, are British trains actually more expensive than those in other countries?

People have tried to work this out but become bogged down by the insanity of rail prices. In December T&E, a consultancy, concluded that of 27 European rail companies, the three most expensive — Avanti West Coast, GWR and Eurostar — all operated in the UK. Except in its calculations it accidentally included a £74.90 mid-afternoon fare between London and Milton Keynes that did not exist.

If we were to do this properly, we’d gather fare revenue data from rail companies and divide it by the number of passenger miles, but, sadly, the former is commercially sensitive. So let’s do the next best thing and compare a few examples across Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the US.

The first thing that stands out is how absurdly expensive some UK peak trains have become. I looked at six train journeys of about 160 miles, as the crow flies, over the course of a typical Wednesday morning, booked about a week ahead. Between 6 and 9am the priciest Paris to Lyon train cost about £94. The most expensive New York to Baltimore service cost £132, but Madrid to Zaragoza, Rome to Pisa and Munich to Hamburg all came in at less than £50 (with prices barely increasing later in the day). And London to Manchester? The most expensive — and most common — fare at that time is £175.50.

If you’re happy to travel after 9.30, however, our pricing looks quite comparable to that of other countries.

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When it comes to extracting maximum value from its passengers, Britain has always been ahead of the curve. Nearly every country in the world used to price tickets on a per-mile basis, but we broke ranks in the 1960s and 1970s and charged according to demand.

But recently, points out Mark Smith, owner of the train website The Man in Seat 61, UK rail companies discovered what airlines already knew: for flexible tickets, bought at short notice largely by business travellers, you can whack the price right up. Europe, Smith says, is heading that way, but tickets are priced at what markets can bear: perhaps continental operators worry nobody will pay sky-high morning business prices.

Another predominantly British artefact is the “travel tomorrow” premium. If you want to take the 07:56 Paris to Dijon train, you should get a seat for about £65. That’s £65 tomorrow, £65 next week and £65 in a month’s time.

The 08:13 from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, on the other hand, is £193 tomorrow, but falls to a slightly less eye-watering £123.50 for six weeks’ time.

Another consequence of exorbitant business fares is that if you can travel outside Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, bargains can be had, even at short notice. If you’re a Londoner planning a long weekend in Manchester, for example, you can pay £193 for the 08:13 Euston to Piccadilly service on Thursday — or wait a day and pay the Friday fare of £38 (assuming all those cheap tickets haven’t been sold yet).

As well as the gift of foresight and a willingness to travel outside peak hours, it can also help if we have no intention of getting there quickly. Those expensive peak-time options linking London and Manchester all take just over two hours. But if you’re happy to get there in 3½ hours, you can purchase a coveted £14 ticket leaving at 06:43 (while stocks last, and as long as you don’t mind hanging around at Crewe).

There are bargains if you can be bothered to look. I analysed the cost of 56 return routes across Europe and America, travelling on consecutive days and booked about nine days ahead. One of the cheapest, per mile, was London to Birmingham, which costs as little as £18. This service leaves at a respectable 10:56 from London Marylebone, coming back from Snow Hill at 11:36 the next day; by contrast, many of the cheap European options involve sleepers or 3am starts.

Our train ticket system is one of the most complicated in the world. But it is not necessarily the most expensive, if you know where, and when, to look.