Yeah. As somebody who was stuck on this train (and therefore had about half of my planned day in York evaporate...) it felt like:
-At basically all times, it felt like the passengers were very much not kept informed, which I feel reasonably sure was because the LNER staff on the train also weren't kept informed. At one point, the T'bird had been sat ahead of our train in a siding for about an hour, so it felt like somebody probably knew at that point "it might not be safe to move the unit, so the t'bird will be of no use in that case; keep it on standby but don't proceed with actually backing it up to the train to tow it". But the staff on the train (in our coach at least!) were - I think honestly - telling us "we're waiting for the T'bird to come and push and/or tow us". So the passengers around me were - not unreasonably! - assuming "in the not too distant future, we're going to be towed; the staff told us it was dispatched from Newark, like, an hour ago, it must be nearly here, nobody's saying the tow option won't work." Those few of us who were on Traksy were already thinking "it looks like there's at least a fair amount of doubt that will happen!", but that wasn't what the staff in the train were saying.
-Similarly, the evacuation was announced, the staff on the train were telling us "the evacuation unit is on its way, get your belongings together to prepare to transfer to a rescue train it'll be here fairly soon", when again it was clear on Traksy "there's a unit that may have been dispatched from York for an evacuation - but they've held it for now, so either that's not our evacuation unit, or somebody's already thinking the evacuation may not be necessary, either way we're not gonna be evacuating the train soon!". The staff on the train presumably didn't know that plan had changed until after we'd already set off on our way to York at reduced speed though! Again, it feels like the nebulous "railway" already knew the plan had changed, but they didn't bother to tell anyone on the actual train what was going on.
And yeah, if, after the rescue unit was dispatched, the fitter on site said "whoa, hang on, I reckon I actually can get this moving at reduced speed, which is still going to be quicker than an evacuation, hold the evacuation for now" it was absolutely the right decision to cancel the evacuation. But the communication about that was basically non-existant - and at no point did anybody explain "why didn't we evacuate you two hours ago". The answer might well be "nobody on the ground has a clue, and the people who do have a clue off-site aren't going to spend the time communicating that decision because they're busy dealing with the massive problem", but the end result is that the passengers feel like they're being ignored.
Obviously in terms of "why does it matter", it's not like telling passengers what's going on actually resolves things any quicker ... but it would certainly help keep people calmer. The BTP actually did end up attending and having (what I assume were) stern words with somebody in my coach who was being fairly rude towards the staff...
