Fourthly

Durable suspension cables

The Predigtstuhlbahn also marked a turning point in cable technology. Earlier cable cars suffered from frequent suspension cable breakages. The suspension cables of the Predigtstuhlbahn date all the way back to 1928 and are still as good as new. This is due on the one hand to numerous innovations in steel cable technology and new findings relating to cable tensioning on the other. The heart of the base station is therefore the tensioning room, located 14 metres below ground. There, 104 tonnes of weight ensure that the suspension cables are fully tensioned and the cable line leads steeply upwards. That represented an innovation in those days. The brilliant inventor of modern cable car technology Alois Zuegg had the then most massive tensioning weights in the world installed for the Predigtstuhlbahn. Standard today, it was revolutionary at the time.