I've been known to hang out in several forum areas but not as much as in past years.
I'm glad you like the old system. I always enjoyed having someone else in the cab working the loco with me - a kind of team effort.
I wrote the original scripts years ago back in TRS04 when you could control steam locos without working cab interiors if you had a custom script for the cab that implemented the various keystrokes. Nowadays that's frowned upon but with the basic script you could control the loco from the keyboard even if no controls existed in the cab.
I eventually added coding for a "programmed" fireman to manage the fire. I had versions where the programmed fireman also managed the water level in the boiler and the steam blower to help keep the pressure up when idle for short periods or with poor steaming at low speeds but I don't think those additions ever got out of my computer.
I can say that the logic the fireman used in those scripts doesn't work well with the "new" steam physics introduced with TS09. Besides that, the cabin script needed a companion script set up in the loco asset for it to work right and while it did work it became apparent to me that wasn't the best way to handle it. So if you change the especs to a new 09+ version or you run the loco in newer versions of Trainz my advice is to disable my "programmed" fireman if the cabin/loco is equipped with one.
Newer versions of the script for my own use don't include the fireman and I do miss him/her. But as mentioned the logic has to be completely reworked and I'd probably set the script up as a library. The rule/command format might also be a possibility though I don't usually work with them. I'm hopeful based on the testing I've done that it should be possible to program a version of the fireman for the "new" steam physics. While I'd like to re do the code at some point, I'm not working on it and it's not on the current to do list.
Bob Pearson