44 2 LENGTHS OF STAGES CH. XIX 



of the day of only half an hour for lunch, — not time 

 enough for a team to rest, — the arrangement is more 

 complicated. 



If long stages are adopted, each coach can take 

 its teams one after the other straight through, each 

 team working only once on one day and returning 

 the next. This is simple, but not adapted to a fast 

 coach, because the stages will be either too lono- 

 to be done at a high speed, or each team will be 

 doing less than a good day's work, it being assumed 

 that a team can travel a greater distance in two 

 hours than in one. 



If short stages are adopted, and each team works 

 once each way, over its own ground, while the 

 early morning and afternoon teams will have suffi- 

 cient rests between their turns, those working in 

 the middle of the day will not. 



If, for instance, the two coaches start from the 

 different ends of the road at 10 a.m., and arrive at 

 6 p.m., meeting at two o'clock at a point where only 

 a half-hour's stop is made, the team which brought 

 one coach down from i to 1.45 would have to take 

 the other up, starting at 2.15, without sufficient rest. 

 It will be, therefore, necessary to have at this centre 

 point another team for each coach, that team which 

 comes in, resting until the next day. The two 

 stages joining at this place would have to be longer 

 than the others to equalise the work. If the whole 

 road, for instance, is fifty-six miles long, or each 

 half twenty-eight miles, divided into four seven-mile 



