BERLIN, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- A new cableway leading to Germany's highest peak, Zugspitze mountain, in the Bavarian Alps, will be opened on Thursday after two and a half years of work on what was the country's highest construction site.
The cableway breaks three world records for a pendular, or hanging, cable car system: at 127 meters, its steel column is the tallest, with 1,950 meters it overcomes the highest elevation difference, and with a total run length of 3,213 meters from base station to peak, it has the longest span.
The cableway cost 50 million euros (59.35 million U.S. dollars) to build under difficult conditions for construction work at high altitudes and low temperatures.
Among the main challenges were removing snow and ice from construction equipment at the mountain top and delivering the material for the support columns.
"Even veteran engineers were pushed to their limits by this project," said Ueli Spinner of the Swiss-based ABB engineering company.
The fully glazed cable cars can transport up to 580 passengers per hour to the Zugspitze. The system replaces the 50-year-old Eibsee cableway and will help overcome the Eibsee's notoriously long waiting times by tripling the transport capacity.
Pulling the gondolas over such a long distance at gradients of as much as 104 percent and a speed of 10.6 meters per second requires significant power, which is supplied by two 800-kilowatt three-phase AC motors from ABB that are housed in the cableway's valley station.
