A stagecoach (also: stage coach, stage, road coach, diligence[1]) is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are drawn by six horses.
Commonly used before steam-powered rail transport was available, a stagecoach made long scheduled trips using stage stations or posts where the stagecoach's horses would be replaced by fresh horses. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging.[2]
Some familiar images of the stagecoach are that of a Royal Mail coach passing through a turnpike gate, a Dickensian passenger coach covered in snow pulling up at a coaching inn, a highwayman demanding a coach to "stand and deliver" and a Wells Fargo stagecoach arriving at or leaving an American frontier town. The yard of ale drinking glass is associated by legend with stagecoach drivers, though it was mainly used for drinking feats and special toasts.[3][4]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
smithwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Holmes, Oliver Wendell; Rohrbach, Peter T. (1983). Stagecoach East: Stagecoach Days in the East from the Colonial Period to the Civil War. Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-87474-522-1.
- ^ "Yard-of-ale glass (drinking glass)". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 20 July 1998. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2010.
- ^ "The Yard of Ale : Our History". www.theyardofale.com. 2008. Archived from the original on 4 March 2010. Retrieved 10 March 2010.