A stage station or relay station, also known as a staging post, a posting station, or a stage stop, is a place where an exhausted horse or horses could be replaced by fresh animals. A long journey was much faster with no delay to rest horses. Stage is the space between the places known as stations or stops — known to Europeans as posts or relays. Organised long-distance land travel became known as staging 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.
