Sir Terry revealed that he expected to be forced from his HS2 job by Government because of concerns about ballooning costs at Crossrail.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 PM programme on Saturday after leaks to the Financial Times about reports of his looming dismissal, he said: “I did get confirmation late yesterday afternoon that that was a leak.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m expecting that to be confirmed more formally in the next few days.”

Sir Terry went on to claim that he had told London Mayor Sadiq Khan that Crossrail would be delayed more than a month before it was finally announced at the end of August.

He also said train commissioning, which was not the responsibility of Crossrail, was also well behind programme, inferring this too would have caused delays

On his dismissal, he said that he had mixed feelings.

“I do feel a sense of responsibility for contributing to the position on Crossrail. On HS2, I have a lot of experience and knowledge to give to that programme but disappointed that now I will not have the opportunity to do this.”

On Crossrail, he said he remained very disappointed there were so many challenges so late in the programme, particularly on system integration.

“And that’s because there are some tremendously gifted engineers who built what I know will be a fantastic programme,” he added.

Sir Terry challenged accounts of when delays were first reported to the London Mayor, claiming Crossrail red-flagged the need to delay completion from 2018 to 2019 a month before this was revealed to the public.

“There’s been some unfortunate comment about who knew what and when about whether the programme on Crossrail was running late.

“I’m very confident that Crossrail behaved properly. There will be and there are plenty of documents that set out exactly what happened and when.

“And I do hope that these documents will be released soon for others to understand. I don’t understand why all the comments that have been made, have been made as they are, because some of them are just factually not correct.

”Obviously it’s insinuation that says in the detail, although the station build did run a little late, what most people don’t realise is that the rolling stock, the trains, are a contract that is not a Crossrail contract, they’re a Transport for London contract, I’m not responsible for the rolling stock and nor are any of the executive.

“I personally now realise that TfL were advised that this train contract was running 18 months late and had known that for at least eight months and that to me, today, still feels to be the case.

“We still have not got train testing underway.”

TfL maintains that it was not until 29 August that they were told that the opening of central section would be definitely delayed until Autumn 2019.