My wife and I recently took the train from Boston to New York City, which is a trip of a bit under 4 1/2 hours, about 215 miles (about 350 km). If you shop carefully and are willing to travel at awkward times, you can just about get a trip for $40 for coach seats, but we got a more normal time and paid $150 per person each way, for a total of $600.
Considering typical wages in the United States these days, that would be two or three hours of labor for the cheapest trip, and five to seven hours of labor for the expensive one.
Even considering that parking in at our hotel in Manhattan is $50 a day, (no, that is not typical – the center of New York is just about the highest parking rates in the United States) it would have been cheaper to drive.
Do you have that kind of peak/off peak cost difference, and what is the general city-to-city cost for a trip like that? How do train prices in countries which use trains compare to United States prices, both in terms of money, and in typical hours of work?