I really liked this story. At first I thought that either everyone was dead or that Doug was dreaming. There were some things that confused me or that I thought weren't really explained. For instance, what happened to all of the people on Doug's train and why was he the only one that was left, not even the conductor? How/why did Doug and the train breach the curtain of time that day and never any other day? Are we supposed to think it was because his birthday was coming up and he was wishing time would slow down? If that were the case, then everyone would have visited Hanover Hills at some point.

Also, if time had frozen or was rewinding itself every day (like the store shelves being refilled), why did the people continue to remember from day to day and note what would have been the passage of normal time? Maybe I've watched too much Star Trek. I'm reminded of a scene in DS9 where O'Brien is working with his future (a few hours ahead) self to save the station and they're trying to make sense of the whole time thing in terms of having memory of it and they both blurt out something like "I hate temporal mechanics." But this story was more "Twilight Zone" than "Star Trek." It had that whole "average guy being snapped up into the Zone to achieve some outcome" thing going.

But I did like the story a lot.