The station is 77 miles 23 chains (77.29 mi; 124.4 km) down the line from the zero point at London Paddington and lies between Didcot Parkway and Chippenham.

It is served by GWR services from Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads; Cheltenham Spa via Gloucester; Cardiff Central, Swansea and the rest of South Wales; and to Westbury.

Construction began in late 1835, and by the end of August 1840 the line was open between Paddington and Faringdon Road (later known as Challow), also between Bristol and Bath.

Reading was chosen as one place to change engines, being both a major station and, at just under 36 miles (58 kilometres), approximately one-third of the 118-mile (190-kilometre) distance from Paddington to Bristol.

The proximity of the North Wilts Canal was also a factor, since it would enable coke for the locomotives and coal for the workshops to be supplied from the Somerset Coalfield at a reasonable price.

The original building was demolished in 1972, with today's modern station and office block erected on the site.

Services terminating or starting here on the lines to Westbury via Chippenham and Gloucester use platform 2, a west-facing inset bay.

The railway in the vicinity of Swindon station and for a distance of about 20–30 miles (30–50 kilometres) in each direction towards Didcot, Bristol, South Wales and Gloucester was controlled from a signal box situated behind platform number 4.

The panel box is a Western Region Integra design built by Henry Williams (Darlington) and opened in March 1968.

[29] The project cost was estimated at £50.2 million and received backing from the South West Development Agency and others[30] but stalled when it was left out of the new Coalition Government's Spending Review in October 2010.

[34] The electrification project had first been announced by the previous Government's Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis, on 23 July 2009.