You imagined they did. Electrification was paused, I think now cancelled, because of the inability of those involved to do something which at one time was relatively straightforward. It would be interesting to see statistics for the electrification of the ECML▸ , all those years ago. I seem to recall this electrification scheme was completed at well under projected cost, and BR▸ (remember them?) handed back a large amount of money to the government upon the completion of all works. Unless anyone knows different..
The Railways Archive has a copy of the last progress report on ECEL -
link in this page. I think that says the project was a few days late and 5% over "authority", but how that relates to anyone's budget I couldn't say. Perhaps if you'd like to read it all and let us know ...
The report also contains a lot of details that are interesting in engineering terms, from all branches - power,
S&T▸ , rolling stock, or whatever.