No big deal, mate -- I was pretty sure you were joking, but I was worried that the OP (...if they ever re-appear ...) might have taken you seriously.
Thanks for digging up links to those tutorials. IMHO, they were pretty close to what the OP asked about, but, as you pointed out, not quite a perfect match. I was particularly taken aback by the 2nd one -- I have never seen anyone use so many adjustment layers to come up with a simple effect. It was crazy.
Specifically, almost everything needed to closely match the 1st image cited in this thread can be done by taking the image into ACR and moving a few sliders. About the only thing that one needs PS for is to simulate the diffuse veiling flare that occurs when a dirty or low quality lens is pointed into the sun. For that, I use the lens flare filter in PS. I don't have time to exactly reproduce the look the OP asked for (I wasn't going for a romantic look), but I had a tweaked version of the fiddler that I posted in a parallel thread that's pretty close. I didn't save the PSD file, so I'm going by memory, but I'm 99.9% sure that my technique was as I described above: a quick set of color temp and tonality adjustments in ACR, then I added the flare in PS as the final step. I attached the before and after versions below.
BTW, if there is an action available to make the effect that you want, there is another, very easy way to figure out how they did it: Actions are incredibly easy to reverse engineer. Just download a copy of the action, open it, and read off each and every step that it contains. It's a great way to learn.
HTH,
Tom M