There is a tale that goes along the following lines. Daniel Gooch and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were out walking in Wiltshire, looking for a suitable place to build their steam works. They were determined that they would construct the Great Western Railway starting at Paddington in London passing through Reading, Cirencester, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bristol, Bath, Taunton, Bridgewater terminating at Exeter. However, they needed an accessible place to build the trains to run on it. They needed somewhere in the middle and Gooch is supposed to have said that the market town of Swindon might do the trick. Brunel agreed and then they decided that wherever they threw the crusts of their lunch that is where it would go.
Sadly this is not the case. One of the main reasons Swindon was chosen is that it was ideally serviced by canals. In fact, a lot of the town’s current road system was at one point a Canal. This fact hastened the building of the railway. This railway would soon come to replace it.
Ask any of the Accountants Swindon based, and they will tell you it made sound financial logic. In fact if you want the best ones then visit https://chippendaleandclark.com/. The town was already prospering because of the waterways but the railways put the icing on the cake. Part of the reason it was chosen was because of the skill of the existing navvie population which was also needed.