Machine Location

Ah but it did move geographically if you remember the ending. Alan Young's character of Filby notices the scratches on the floor from where Rod Taylor had to drag the machine back into the lab. The Morlocks had moved the machine into their stronghold and he had to travel back in time to his present before he could move it back again geographically. True it didn't move far but it did move. As for Well's machine it is the same machine at two different points in time. After he returns he plans to do something to render the machine inoperative and it is later found and moved to its present location so since it has been moved after his time the machine follows the track through time that it has already taken. I think the reason he didn't go back a week and stop Stevenson from taking the machine was that it would create a paradox. Since he hadn't done so and therefore didn't remember seeing himself (much less remember warning himself) he couldn't do so. And so the reason he could go into the future on that time/space track was that it had already happened that way. You wonder if the machine could in fact go backwards in time to be before it was built or not.