Is / Has anything actually happened with the Mk3 Genny Vans lately? As it must be over a year since the first one had been repainted and sent up to York Road. Just hope this doesnt become another case of the curse of Belfast York Road (Refurbish and Repaint an item of rolling stock, then store it, change your minds on it and scrap the idea altogether - Yes NIR, I'm looking at you and the DBSO!)...
As for the Mk3s, it would be nice to see them refurbished and used on the Enterprise - Might push up the reliability then!, but unfortunately Dick Fearn & co's Iarnród Éireann never seem to show any enthusiasm towards loco hauled services at all, rather preferring DMUs to Loco & Coaches*. At one point, i think they were an option for increased and upgraded Hourly services on the Enterprise, but then the problems at Malahide occurred, as well as the apparent almost overload of IE with 22000s - (6 of which are cleared for Enterprise services, along with 6 NIR C3Ks) and to top that, the European wide Financial Crisis came along.
But i hope something does indeed happen to upgrade the Enterprise service - I like the route, but thanks to a rather disastrous evening back in 2010, where i had to cut the journey short after another one of the enterprises regular problems (Surprise Surprise an electrical head end power issue which could be solved by the use of an Aux gen), I was rather less than impressed at the service it could and should well be.
*The irony of this being that in 2005, IE / NIR / HSBC did investigate the use of the then potentially redundant 7 9 Car 222s on the Enterprise service, However Dick Fearn has always never been a fan of the Voyagers or any of Bombardiers clones, hence why the design of the 22000s are so radically different and more Mk3 based.