We've all been there, hopping on Trainline to book a last-minute train to Leeds or London, or rocking up to Lime Street Station to catch whatever train you can to deal with a family emergency.
We've all seen some of the eye-watering fares on the screen, forcing us to break the bank for a three-hour journey or just stay put.
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If you decided on Thursday to go from Lime Street to London on Friday and come home this Sunday, you could pay £68.70 for late-night arrivals, or £86.10 at certain earlier times.
But that's the cheapest you'll get for a ticket a day in advance, with most booked slots costing over £120.
Even travelling one month later would cost over £70 if you booked on Thursday, February 3.
The usual advice is to grab bargains by booking ahead, but tickets aren't even available yet for most of April and beyond.
Flexibility costs a small fortune, with an off-peak return ticket is almost £100, and the anytime return ticket, allowing you to make your journey there and back at any time of the day for a month, costs over £342.
Bruce Williamson, spokesperson of Railfuture, which campaigns for better rail services, said: "You can have these cheap bargains, but for many people, they're just not practical or attractive.
"What we all want to do is get on the train when we want to get on the train and not have to plan weeks in advance and just, you know, buy a ticket, get a seat and not get ripped off for it.
"And what's going on, to a large extent, is it's demand management. It's doing what the airlines do.
"They're adjusting the prices to keep the trains full at all times, not too full during rush hour, and fuller during the off-peak period.
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"It's the trains operating companies managing passengers to suit their needs, rather than managing trains to suit the needs of the passengers."
Train expert Mark Smith was once in charge of the Department for Transport team regulating fares and ticketing on the British rail network.
A few years ago, he compared the cost of a ticket from London to Sheffield with the price for a similar journey in Germany, France and Italy, showing the price of each if it was booked a month in advance, if it was booked one day ahead, if you were travelling today at off-peak times, and if you were travelling today at business peak hours.
Prices have risen since, but at the time, Mark found that, with the exception of same day peak hour travel, the UK had tickets cheaper than or the same price as other European countries, and he says this is "still true today".
On his website, he wrote: "The next time someone says (or you read) "Britain has the highest rail fares in Europe", you'll know this is only 15% of the story. The other 85% is that we have similar or even cheaper fares, too.
"The big picture is that Britain has the most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more revenue by filling more seats.
"This is exactly what airlines have known, and been doing, for decades."
Passenger numbers fell to one of the lowest levels for a century during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and they still have not fully recovered to pre-pandemic highs.
Roughly 200 million fewer rail passenger journeys were made in Great Britain between July 1 and September 2021, compared with the same period in 2019, according to the latest figures from the Office of Rail and Road.
Travel on Merseyrail was 70% of what it was in the same period two years ago.
In an effort to to encourage people to return to railways as covid restrictions eased, Northern launched a flash sale of over a million £1 tickets in August 2021.
Overall though, the average price for train tickets has climbed by an eye watering 48.9% since 2010, squeezing many passengers whose wages have grown slower than the cost of living.
The price of a season ticket from Liverpool to Manchester could rise a further £105 in March due to the 3.8% price increase cap set by the Department for Transport.
Bruce said: "What particularly peeves us is not just the unfairness of that in itself, but for the last 12 years on the trot now, [the government has] frozen fuel duty for motorists, which gives the lie to any notion at all that they've got any green credentials.
"It's nonsense. They're giving the motorists a free ride and ripping off rail passengers every year."
He blames government policy and a lack pf political support for rail subsidies for such high and rising prices.
Mark agrees, at least in terms of the cost of short distance and commuter trips.
The rail expert wrote: "Commuter/short distance fares are largely subsidized, and broadly-speaking it's a political choice between higher taxation, higher subsidy, lower fares, and lower taxation, lower subsidy and higher fares, which we Brits have tended to make lower down the tax/subsidy range and higher up the fare price range than other countries, for better or for worse."
Railfuture campaigner Bruce believes widespread investment in high-speed lines and electric trains by a government committed to improved, environmentally friendly infrastructure might help the network, even if it doesn't knock down prices.
He said: "The stop/start, feast and famine that we continue to see is really, really bad for the railways.
"Long-term, sustained investment is what the railways need. A rolling programme of electrification is what we need.
"Everyone's going green. We need electric trains as well as electric cars, and the only way we're going to get that is when we put the wires up.
"And the only way we're going to do that is if we have the money to do it, and a skilled, trained team of engineers"
