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Great British Railway Journey presenter Michael Portillo has shown viewers his love for local culture and railway history, but there was a time he warned the rail route that is now known as the Elizabeth Line would be "unnecessary". Portillo, who was chief secretary to the Treasury, predicted that the Crossrail London link "would never be built", according to government papers released by the National Archives.

He and then-chancellor of the exchequer Kenneth Clarke contributed to the shelving of the Crossrail project, between 1994 and 2006, and it was revived by the Labour government. 10 years later, it was officially renamed the Elizabeth line and opened in May 2022.

In a memo he wrote to then-prime minister John Major for the introduction to parliament of a bill to build an east-west underground railway between Liverpool Street and Paddington. He penned: "If we carry on with the Crossrail bill, we will dodge a bad press next week. But we will have stored up a political problem for the next 10 years."

"The public sector could never afford to build it. We will get private sector money on sensible terms only if private sector investors believe LT's forecasts. But our consultants say that they won't, that the forecasts aren't realistic.

"If we go ahead with the Crossrail bill, the project will not be built in the next parliament. Or in the parliament after that. Indeed, I think that it will never be built - and that a decision to go ahead with the bill now simply means, one day, taking another decision to cancel it."

Since the Elizabeth Line has opened, more than 500million passenger journeys have been made in its first two and a half years, making it the single busiest railway service in the UK.

Reddit users found it fascinating as they found out how the Treasury "underestimates the upside of large infrastructure projects and tries to block them".

One said: "HM Treasury is and always has been the biggest blocker to UK growth."

A second wrote: "The Elizabeth Line is the most useful line in London. It is amazing that East-West travel has somehow been beyond comprehension in the UK until now. Oxford-Cambridge next please."

A third added: "The fact that he was commenting on it as minister and it wasn't built for nearly 30 years says a lot about our ability to build infrastructure."

Some found Portillo's career change hilarious, with one sharing: "And now he makes a living by telling Channel 5 viewers how much he loves trains."