Why is there an assumption the 379s will leave just because the lease ends in July? No other ToC has leased them so far, they’ll be needed by GA. That said I don’t trust GA management, they’ve been horribly incompetent and ill informed of operations. The 360s can’t leave in July or the GEML will slowly crumble with a cake ton of short forms. EMR will suffer way less with delayed 360s than GA will without them. Logic doesn’t always apply in railwayland and a lease is a lease and a bid team miscalculation is a miscalculation. They banked on everything running smoothly and cake PR all over every press release to cover it up. Smear it with a smile seems to be their approach.
Also
@samuelmorris the 720s cannot run Clacton because several diagrams split/join from 12 to 8 to 4 to 8 to 12 and have been built around a 4/8/12 railway.
Another major misjudgement by the bid team. Why change to a 5/10 railway and create problems for yourself as a ToC that are unnecessary?