GWR provides high speed, commuter, regional and branch line train services, carrying more than 100 million passengers every y ... ear across the Great Western rail franchise area, which includes South Wales, the West Country, the Cotswolds, and large parts of Southern England. We have signed an extension to franchise, meaning we will run it until at least March 2023, bringing our experience of managing the route over many years to ensure the successful delivery of the major programme of infrastructure upgrades on the network. The £7.5bn Great Western Mainline modernisation programme is the biggest investment on the route since Brunel. During this time, we are introducing new or refurbished trains on every part of the network GWR's new environmentally-friendly fleets of commuter Electrostar trains and bi-mode InterCity Express Trains (IETs) have delivered more seats and increased levels of punctuality. The largest timetable change since the 1970s was successfully introduced in December 2019, taking advantage of the new trains to offer faster journey times and more frequent services to key locations. read more