Body-mounted couplers?

[MountainMan]

There is an interesting discussion going on in the N-scale magazine re body-mounted couplers, the gist of it being that they are more alistic in appearance an operation and that the manufacturers should be truer to protoype. However, I have not seen similar arguments made in the mixed gauge publications.

Is this merely an N-scale issue of some sort, or is it wider spread?