Don,
I am truly grateful for the info. However they were lettered, the mechanism partially embossed the letters and numbers into the steel. I smoothed it out with the Bondo putty too.
Truthfully, I bought these with intentions of making a Christmas train rather than restoring them to showroom condition. I'm going to fix the rust so the cars don't continue to corrode away and when the next person gets them they will be ready for brown paint. I had originally planned to paint the interior white for better lighting, but thanks to your input, I will leave the original paint on the inside so the next person will know they were originally brown cars.
