I have only been considering flying from Barcelona to Sevilla, likely on vueling as it has the best prices. Is there any advantage to taking the train instead of flying? The flight appears to be cheaper than the train and certainly is faster so why would someone choose the train? Because it's romantic?

Of course I mean flying vs overnight train - sorry about that!

cheap one way flights is a RECENT thing. train travel developped long ago, and flights were very dear then, and yes.. flying now is at times cheaper than DRIVING places.

so.. why would anyone take the train?

probably in this particular case only if you had a phobia about flying or heavy luggage.

Except in movies, there is nothing romantic about hours on a train.
Fly!

Why would I take a night train? To save the cost of a night in a hotel, to have more daylight hours for sightseeing, and to produce less of a "carbon footprint" than I would by flying.

>Why would I take a night train? To save the cost of a night in a hotel, to have more daylight hours for sightseeing, and to produce less of a "carbon footprint" than I would by flying.

... or simply to reduce the "waking hours" spent on transfer. If you are able to sleep on the night train (in my case it's hit-or-miss) you can start your sightseeing at your destination in the morning instead of midday which would be the case if you had flown in the morning.

I've actually taken the overnight train from Barcelona to Sevilla recently and I'd say it all depends on what type of travel experience you want. We really didn't waste any time or money, you leave Barcelona late at night and arrive in Sevilla early the next morning. We had a good time socializing. Probably spent too much time in the bar car getting happy on the way but managed to get a good nights rest before arriving.

I took an overnight train from Venice to Paris because I was flying home from Paris the next morning. Otherwise, I would have had to spend an extra night near CDG airport, so the train saved me money and gave me extra hours in Venice.

Thanks everyone, as I suspected.