Identification: Ray Bradbury short story (Time is like cars on a train?)

May 28, 2014 8:04 AM

It is not "A Sound of Thunder".

I am trying to identify a short story I read somewhere between 1981 and 1984. The story might be much older, but it is at least 30+ years old.

I am 99%+ sure it was by Ray Bradbury. It was part of a hardcover anthology, but I don't know if the entire book was Bradbury or a collection of different authors.

I can remember at some point the passing of time is compared to cars on a train. And each moment we move from car to car. That these cars were nearly identical but not always.

There was also a comment about if we misplaced an item, only to find it later, that it might have been missing from that moment's car.

Sorry this is so hazy. I looked through Bradbury's collections in a library and did not find the story. It is not "A Sound of Thunder" and I also tried to eliminate some of Bradbury's more popular stories.

Any ideas? Thanks for reading my question.

posted by 99percentfake to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

There's a sequence using that analogy in "A Matter of Minutes," from the 1980s New Twilight Zone, which I see was based on a Ted Sturgeon story called "Yesterday Was Monday."
posted by redfoxtail at 8:33 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I just used this analogy yesterday and remembered it from the Twilight Zone episode redfoxtail mentioned.
posted by elmer benson at 10:54 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Any chance it could be "By the Numbers"? Part of that story takes place on a train. I'm not sure what collection it was reprinted in.
posted by cadge at 12:44 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you for these answers -- I watched or read them. I can see why they were suggested. All of them (plus The Langoliers) cover similar terrain but none were what I was trying to remember. I'm leaving this unresolved for now.
posted by 99percentfake at 8:03 PM on June 1, 2014