A stage station or relay station, also known as a staging post, a posting station, or a stage stop, is a facility along a main road or trade route where a traveller can rest and/or replace exhausted working animals (mostly riding horses) for fresh ones, since long journeys are much faster with fewer delays when using well fed and rested mounts. Stage is the space between the places known as stations or stops — also known in British English as posts or relays.
Organised long-distance land travel became known as staging[1] or posting. Stagecoaches, post chaises, private vehicles, individual riders and the like followed the already long-established system for messengers, couriers and letter-carriers.
Through metonymy the name stage also came to be used for a stagecoach alone.
- ^ Holmes, Oliver W. (1983). Stagecoach East. ISBN 0-87474-522-5.