The coordination of alternative routes is, sadly, not terribly impressive for those who must travel, and don't have an alternative.
I was advising a colleague yesterday about 9th Feb travel. He is not able to fly for health reasons, and we do not want him to try driving to Amsterdam from Newark! Coach travel is also more difficult for him. But of course, there are trains from London to Amterdam. Easy, you might think. Direct train leaves STP at 1104, and regular indirects changing Brussels...
...but the ECML is down to a fraction of the usual service, starring later, and no timetable actually published yet, so you can't plan. And the MML is also closed that morning, which makes any journey hopeless on a Sunday morning by rail.
The fail here is coordination over alternate routes, both to avoid simultaneous closures and a system that discourages alternate routes from providing sufficient extra capacity ( e.g. in this case, using all those recently released HSTs or the new diesel capacity of some Azuma units).
Not entirely a fault of EastCoast, Network Rail or EMR individually, but an industry aporoach and policy that doesn't make it viable to work together providing alternatives effectively.
Not going to be fixed without some fundamental rewrites of responsibilities and policy, either. Hohum. There is not the political will to do it either, I suspect, as it removes commercial freedoms further.