They weren't so shiny when they were hauling freight in the 50s!
My father was a bit of a trainspotter and rode in the cab of the LMS Turbomotive, about the only unconventional steam locomotive to be superior to the conventional type (Gresley tried a water tube boiler, Bulleid got away with some shocking things like the Leader class and chain-driven valve gear, but none of them worked well). Turbomotive was damned by its umiqueness in the end, being rebuilt as piston-engined Princess Anne when it needed spare turbine parts and promptly being written off at Harrow & Wealdstone.