I sometimes feel great sympathy for the Minister because John, Hefin, other Members here, and myself, get up and we incessantly labour on about the particular interests in our own communities. But we make no excuse for this because I sometimes feel like I'm doing running surgeries when I travel back and forth every day from Maesteg to Cardiff. There, I sit down and speak to people on everything under the sun, but it is very often rail services. And there is excitement, I have to say, about the changes, some of which are imminent—and I'll turn to those on my own stretch of the track at the moment—but also some frustration on the things that have been said.

It's great to see that there are more and more rail passenger users. That's a testimony to the fact that people are now switching on to those modes; they're seeing congestion on the roads and so on. But I have to say, I'm fortunate in that I get on the train in Maesteg or Ewenny Road or in Garth, I'm always guaranteed a seat; even on match days, I'm guaranteed a seat. But actually, even on a normal day in peak time, by the time you get to Bridgend, it's filling up; Llanharan, it's full up; Pontyclun, it's standing room only. But there are ways through this. So, I do welcome the fact—. I'm going out tomorrow to look at the refurbished and ultra-modernised class 170 carriages that are being introduced—bigger capacity, more seats, more space, more comfort, with passenger information on board, which we do not have on the current trains, with proper functioning Wi-Fi, we hope, as well. Also with fully accessible toilets, et cetera, et cetera. I'm looking forward to seeing those because those, for my line, will make a real difference at those times when we get to the Llanharan and the Pontycluns, to have more capacity, more seating capacity, is not only what we need and what we absolutely need purely for health and safety, because I've travelled enough on the London tube to know what it looks like, and from Pontyclun inwards, it looks like that increasingly now at peak times. But these carriages will help because they will increase capacity. So, I'm looking forward to seeing those tomorrow.

I'm looking forward, as well, to seeing them introduced not just on the regular routes but also on the Sunday service, which is coming on 15 December to Maesteg. Our line has been without a Sunday service forever and a day. People who are alive now, who are 50 years of age, have never seen a Sunday service, myself included. This will be the first time we see it. This idea of creating a seven-day-a-week network, where people cannot only travel for the January sales or in to work in Bridgend and Cardiff on the rail, but also can come up to see us as well, and to see the annual festival we do of choral voices and so on. They can come up to visit us on the train, or they can go walking or cycling up on our hills by coming on the train with it. This is critical.

But I do think we're going through a difficult time, and the difficult time is that transition between the high expectations that everybody has, the massive investment that is unprecedented investment that is going to be going into these, and the realisation of that when people are still, on a day-by-day basis, struggling. But I am more of a half glass full than a half glass empty, and I sympathise with people, but I don't sympathise with them by sitting behind a desk thinking, 'Oh, isn't it awful?' I'm doing it every day as well. I do see it.

So, we do need to keep our foot on the pedal here, and I know the Minister will. He'll be harangued by me about things like how we can release more capacity on the rail by dealing with the Pencoed crossing and the Pencoed bridge. That is critical to some of the things that have been talked about, because if we can get more frequency of services by dealing with the crossing issue there, along that mainline stretch, we can have not just more carriages, but more trains more frequently going up and down.

The investment along the Maesteg stretch of the Maesteg to Bridgend line, in order to get on a single line track, two an hour, maybe three an hour in future or whatever, well, I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the study that the Minister has commissioned on this because I'm really hopeful that in relatively short order, we will be able to signal to people that there is a way forward. I'm sure it'll mean spending some money, but to actually see that, on a busy Monday morning between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., we don't have just two trains—one at 6.50 a.m. and one at 8.04 a.m., but we'll have four trains actually getting us into Bridgend and Cardiff. That's in line with what you're trying to do with the wider network, so we'd like a part of that as well, but we know it will require some significant investment.

And that is my frustration with this as well, I have to say, looking at the hard facts and figures of the lack of investment in the hard rail infrastructure over many, many years from the UK Government. And this isn't a political point, it's a point of darn frustration that we could've fixed things in our area and moved to digital loop, for example, with the Tondu loop, to increase the frequency of that—we could've done that 20 years ago if the money hadn't been sucked down to the south-east of England. Now, we've still got a guy who walks up and down the stairs from the signal box to hand over a key to the carriage that comes past. This is Victorian trains. It's very cute and quaint, but for goodness' sake—.

So, Minister, keep on pushing hard on this. There is frustration out there, but I think every time we see progress with the 170s on my line, followed by brand new rolling stock a few years down the line, Sunday service on 15 December—each one of those will give confidence to people that we're going in the right direction.