Directly Operated Railways seems to have been taken by surprise by the decision to bring forward the termination date of the National Express East Franchise by a month.
Until this week DOR was working on taking over at the timetable change on 13th December.
Now it is 13th November - just over a week away.
Had they had a subscription to the Orange Peril, otherwise known as Rail Business Intelligence, they would have found on the City Page of the October 29 issue an erudite analysis of the NXEC burn rate.
This showed that the franchise was losing £1.27m a week and had £6 million left in the kitty as of 30th September.
So it was pretty clear that NXEC was going to run out of money well before 13th December.
Perhaps DOR was hoping that all those cheap advance purchase tickets NXEC has been flogging would boost revenue - despite other operators experience showing it hammering the revenue line.
UPDATE: This from Charles Yerkes...
DOR still appears to be caught on the back foot judging by their website.
It still has no mention of the momentous news...
UPDATE: This from Lobby Fodder...
I'm not surprised that DOR has been caught out.
There were 'animated discussions' and raised voices late into last night, between party spin doctors and Treasury officials, over how the renationalisation was to be portrayed.
Judging from today's low key announcement the Treasury won.