Well it a long long train ride if you want to go by land - how about taking a boat from say Bari or Ancona to Croatia - say Split then taking a much shorter, but still slow and longish train ride to Bosnia?

If by train all the way you go via Venice and Zagreb i would think and yes you can take overnight trains from Zagreb south somewhere (or from Ljubljana) - personally with young tykes like that i would not want to take many long trains rides though an overnight train could be fun and not to hard.

Train all the way is 22 hours and it seems you have to transfer from the overnight train around 4am and wait a few hours to get the next train - not sure i would want to go this with youngsters or even by myself

One connection - leave Venice-Mestre 21:32 on night train arrive Zagreb 4:18am

leave Zagreb 8:55am arrive Sarajevo 18:05 - a long day train and possibly IME jammed packed

Boats also go overnight and getting a family room on these may be great fun for all - kids can roam around with you on deck and in various entertainment venues on board, etc. If taking the boat then investigate buses as being the best way to reach Sarajevo or any Bosnia place rather than taking trains which go a very roundabout way.

Thanks for your replies! Good information to throw into our decision-making process. karen

curious as to where are you going in Bosnia? As for great sources on European trains in this area i always point out some fine info-loaded sites: www.ricksteves.com; www.seat61.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com - and though there are railpasses such as the Balkan Pass train travel in this area is still dirt cheap so unless traveling a lot more than indicated i would just buy tickets as you go along - ditto for the boats, though you should research days of sailing, etc. I recently wanted to take a boat from Split to Italy and once at the dock the boat that night was scrubbed because of stormy weather and i ended up taking an overnight train from Split to Zagreb and then a day train from there to Venice. For train schedules i always use the Wunderbar www.bahn.de - German rail web portal that has schedules for all of Europe and is relatively easy to use - that's where i got the schedule info from.

Blue Line and Jadrolinija run overnight ferries from Ancona to Split.
www.blueline-ferries.com
www.jadrolinija.hr
In Split the bus and railway stations are very close to the ferry terminal. The bus schedules from Split are here:
www.ak-split.hr

Palenque, we're headed to Sarajevo where my brother and his wife live. While I'm sure we will take day/weekend trips (I really want to see Mostar and hopefully Dubrovnik), our main plan is to help them with their new baby. So you're probably right that buying tickets as we go is a better idea. We're getting the "tourist" out of our system ahead of arrival to SJJ in preparation for the possibility that we won't be doing much there.

I'm realizing that it might end up being cheaper for us to fly after all But it's fun thinking about taking the train!