30+ year pro photog here:
The dirty little secret about the light meter in your camera: It thinks in B&W terms. Picture a scale from 0 to 256. 0 is true black. 256 is true white.
Your light meter wants to balance the scene to make all tonal values a true middle grey.
It did that with the black loco above.
Shooting dark tones in shadows averaged with a bright sky above = getting a grey (in this case blue) sky and a dark loco. To the light meter that averages to your middle grey value.
YOU have to train yourself to think in those terms.
My suggestion is to dig out the manual and look for "Exposure Compensation" settings. On the back of the camera is the +/- button (that will open up a menu option on the back display. (circled in red here)
If you want to "open up" the shadows (see more detail), then you'd use the Exp Comp setting to the + (positive) side.
If you want to bring down the highlight (see more color in the sky) you'd go to the minus/negative side of the setting.
Unfortunately, you get to choose ONE and only one of those options. The difference between the light values in the shadows, and the color in the sky is too great to capture both equally well. The easiest way to get that is to do adjustments in photoshop. Or take two pics, one set for exposure in the dark shadow area, and the second set for the bright sky. Then combine them in post-processing.
I had to spend a ton of time editing images in PhotoShop after a wedding with outdoor portraits because the brides wanted both light in the shadows and nice blue skies at midday.
The other question to ask when looking at a scene, is "Where is the light coming from?"
In the example above, there isn't direct light falling on that side of the engine. There's a lot of reflected light, and it's always softer than direct light. And, if you shot that in the morning or evening, that light is always softer.
Hard light helps define details by having a stark difference between highlights and shadows. that's why pics in direct sun of a person often show all the age lines, crows feet, etc. Put the same person in the shade, take their photo again, and the soft indirect light doesn't have as much of a sharp highlight to shadow ratio. That helps hide the details that are still there.
The loco above is probably very happy that you got her good side in soft light, to hide all of those age spots, and harsh lines.