LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Motor Coach Industries officially opened its National Training Center here last month, and announced a cooperative training initiative with regional trade schools to increase industry exposure among student mechanics and technicians.

The opening was coordinated with MCIs spring road-show promotion, the Grand Tour II, and was marked by an open house and customer visits.

The 11,000-square-foot training center, housed in MCIs expansive Louisville Distribution Center, includes four classrooms, a lounge and a coach-driving simulator room. Two of the classrooms can be combined into banquet space, and a 420-square-foot commissary can be used to stage foods and beverages.

The lounge includes an office-conference area where students can meet with fleet support specialists or use phones and computers, including wireless Internet connections.

While the training center will be used primarily to support an aggressive schedule of MCI classes for motorcoach operators and their technicians, it also has the potential for nontechnical staff development as well, especially the driving simulator.

Derrick Anderson, MCI director of operations in Louisville, considers the simulator room to be the crown jewel of the new facility. The simulator runs drivers through a wide variety of situations, including curvy mountain passes, oblivious pedestrians, snow storms, blown tires and other virtual challenges.

The first training at the new facility began the day after the open house with a three-and-a-half-day "technical tune-up" seminar that included a dozen different modules. Six coaches were used for about 50 students.

In March, MCI conducted a regional training seminar at a trade school, Pennco Tech, in Blackwood, N.J. More than 30 students joined 20 industry technicians for the training.

The program was the first in a series of training programs MCI anticipates conducting with other trade schools.

"Hosting training at a trade school exposes future technicians to our industry," said Kevin Jones, MCIs director of training. "Our customer technicians enjoyed their roles as mentors to the students, and everyone benefited from the hands-on approach to learning. With all the advances in motorcoach technology theres no substitute for a teaching environment where you have future technicians learning along side skilled trades people. It produces big knowledge jumps."

Three Pennco Tech students were invited to attend the technical tune-up session in Louisville last month.

MCI will offer additional regional training seminars in Toronto June 5-7 and in Nashville June 14-15. Another technical tune-up session will be Sept. 25-28 at the Louisville location.

For information about all MCI training, go to www.mcicoach.com, or contact an MCI fleet support manager.