Odd Horten is a neat, meticulous, pipe-smoking train conductor. He is winding up 40 years of service for the Norwegian railways. He wonders, when a man's life has been determined by timetables and clearly-defined journeys along narrow tracks, how he will now spend his free hours. Horten goes about his final work shifts and then enters into the uncertain world of retirement. He meets the dilemma of buying a new pipe using the same placid curiosity he brings to meeting a stranger who invites him to his home.