It can be really cool aesthetically, although I wonder whether it's rather that the general Belle Epoque/Gilded Age-Turn of the century era that steampunk borrows from that was really cool aesthetically. Personally, I'm just in love with the architecture, clothing and industrial design of that period especially. They shot a bunch for an HBO show set in that period near my apartment last year and I got super jealous of the actors and their awesome turn of the century garb. I'm not as sold on the whole steam engine and superfluous gear thing, but that can be cool too.
Other than the last line. I like big oversized steam engines with ridiculously large (but not superfluous if done right) gears. I enjoy looking at the decayed ruins of the giant factories of a hundred years ago. Probably because I grew up with it around on smaller, but still impressive scale (the St.Louis area was full of it in the 70s, a lot of has been torn down since, but you can still find a warehouse that hasn't housed wares in 50 years decaying on the random city street corner.
opacity.us is full of some great stuff if you're into that kind of thing.
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