Spending on rail infrastructure is a political hot potato in Wales with Plaid Cymru in particular arguing that Wales is being short changed by as much as £4bn because HS2 was designated an England and Wales project.
In June the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that the Treasury would be providing £300m for five new stations around Cardiff and Newport between 2026 and 2030, and a series of improvement works including measures to improve capacity in north Wales.
Another £48m would be spent on the South Wales Metro.
The Welsh government said it is pushing for further electrification of lines around Wales.
But it doesn’t believe devolving sections of lines such as the Great Western – which runs from stations such as Swansea and Cardiff, into England and to Paddington in London – is the solution.
“I’m not sure we’re wanting the devolution of it,” said minister for delivery Julie James.
“Really what we want is the funding formulas to be right and the organisation of it to be right so that we have a loud voice for Wales in what is done in Wales and actually we have a very good working relationship with the UK government about which railway stations will be invested in.
“I’m not a separatist politician at all. I want to work inside the UK infrastructure. It’s very important to me that the Great Western Railway line goes all the way to London seamlessly, you know, I don’t want it to only work to the border.
“If you did devolve the whole of rail infrastructure to Wales, you’d want to be really certain that all the money that you needed for that came with, I’d be very concerned whether that would happen as a one off event.”
Once the tri-mode trains are in operation on the Rhymney Valley line, new trains will be introduced on the Ebbw Vale, Cheltenham and Maesteg routes.