Your last sentence is disrespectful to some members on here who happen to be IE staff and your moaning about IE is getting insufferable at this stage. The site would be better served if topics which are of interest to railway modelling were discussed and showcased instead of whine after whine about IE policy, rightly or wrongly. So let's leave it there. Thank you.
To solve the mystery this is because HSTs use buckeye couplers in real life so the Mark IIIs that run with HSTs don't have buffers. Sorry to be the bore of the week!
A few from d'local station today, including 226 on the liner. Click on the link below the pic for more...
226 Ballina - Dublin North Wall Liner by franburke, on Flickr
Jaysus, are you Tom Selleck?! your snooping is almost creepy.
Interesting development, hope it's more Murphy Models standard rather than some fly by night job. Be interesting to see what comes of it.
Hornby have replaced these venerable with a newly tooled, cheap Mark I I'm their 'railroad' range over the last 18 months or so. Still an impressive production run nonetheless. The only major fudge was that the full brake was the same length as the opens, sleeper etc when in reality they were shorter. The new railroad models are quite nice by all accounts.
There are two 73 rebuilt projects on the go at the moment, the MTU engined one is for GBRf and they'll use some of them for the sleeper contract in Scotland. The multi-engined apporach has been undertaken by RVEL for Notwork Fail errrr... I mean Network Rail! http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p119809187
There are some in America called Gen sets. There is a BR class 73 being converted into one too. 57s were indeed converted from 47s, nearly 20 years ago now by a specialist builder (Brush traction)