2024 Boston Marathon stickers for sale at the Expo.

Inside Boston’s Park Street Station, a tiled corridor displays a Bank of America advertisement for the Boston Marathon’s charity initiative. The green and white MBTA sign directs riders toward the Green Line platforms for Copley and westbound service. Park Street—one of the oldest subway stations in the United States—sits beneath the Boston Common, serving as a major interchange for the city’s transit system since 1897.

A train with Bank of America Boston Marathon wrap.

A runner’s bib card for the 2024 Boston Marathon celebrates a milestone in the Abbott World Marathon Majors series, listing all six legendary races: Tokyo, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York, and Boston. Completing all six earns participants the coveted Six Star Medal, recognizing one of distance running’s most challenging global achievements. The card’s bright design, set on a marble surface, captures the excitement and prestige surrounding Boston’s historic 26.2-mile race — the oldest annual marathon in the world.

Along Massachusetts Avenue in Boston’s South End, these adjoining brownstones showcase the neighborhood’s signature Victorian-era architecture—ornate bay windows, intricate cornices, and rich brickwork that reflect the city’s 19th-century building boom. The red and tan façades, accented with distinctive green trim, represent the area’s architectural diversity, where Italianate and Renaissance Revival influences meet. Once part of a working-class district and now one of Boston’s most carefully preserved historic neighborhoods, the South End’s rowhouses remain a defining feature of the city’s urban identity and charm.

Deep beneath central London, Baker Street’s Metropolitan Line platforms reveal the layered engineering of one of the oldest functioning railway systems in the world. The exposed brick tunnel and steel framing date back to the Victorian “cut-and-cover” era of the 1860s, when steam locomotives first ran through these very corridors. The heavy red girders seen above were reinforced during modern refurbishments, supporting the city streets above while housing utilities and cable conduits that power today’s Underground network.

The train at the far end belongs to the S8 Stock series, introduced in 2010 by Bombardier for the Metropolitan Line, equipped with air conditioning and regenerative braking. The dense web of cables and control boxes along the wall carries signal, communication, and traction power circuits, all vital to the line’s safe operation. Baker Street’s infrastructure embodies London Transport’s continual evolution—from soot-covered tunnels to precision-controlled, electrically powered systems still running along the same 19th-century alignments.

Baker Street Station’s Metropolitan Line platforms represent one of the oldest sections of the London Underground, opened in 1863 as part of the world’s first subterranean railway. The terminus platforms, seen here, retain their cut-and-cover Victorian brickwork paired with modern safety updates and striking red-painted steel reinforcements added during later refurbishments.

The station originally served the Metropolitan Railway’s steam-hauled trains running between Paddington and Farringdon before electrification in the early 20th century transformed the network. Period signage advertising “Chiltern Court” and the original Metropolitan Railway branding pay homage to its heritage, contrasting with the exposed wiring, signal lights, and tiling that reveal more than 160 years of evolving underground infrastructure. Today, Baker Street remains a key interchange, connecting five Underground lines while preserving much of the industrial atmosphere that defined London’s pioneering approach to mass transit.