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Challenge 74: Escalation

Can you work out how many steps of the escalator are visible at any given moment?

When Esmeralda walked slowly down the down-moving escalator she reached the bottom after 18 steps. As an experiment she then ran up the same escalator, one step at a time, reaching the top after 48 steps. Assuming that she ran up four times as fast, that is, she took four steps running up in the time she took one step going down, how many steps of the escalator are visible at any given moment?