Air cargo the area surrounding the city and thus land access. As this access was closed, in the so-called Berlin blockade, an airlift remained the only option to get increasingly urgent deliveries of food, coal, and other supplies to West Berlin. Over 330 days to 12 May 1949 a total of 2.26 million tons of cargo were airlifted to Berlin, an average of 6,800 tons a day, 80% by the US and 20% by the UK. Although freight traffic developed modestly, reaching only 800,000 tonnes worldwide by the mid-1950s, the world economy was hitting its post-war stride. Germany and Japan were emerging
Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway coal was the extension of the line north from Lincoln Park through Rochester up to the coal dock it built at the mouth of the Genesee River in 1896. With an initial capacity of 4,000 tons a day, it was expanded in 1909 and 1913. To get coal to Canada, the BR&P arranged a cross-lake ferry service with the Grand Trunk Railway. This service was highly successful, carrying passengers and coal cars to Cobourg and other lake destinations. By 1913, over a million tons of coal a year passed through the Rochester coal dock. As the national economy grew, more