@jim sutter posted:If I remember correctly, I believe a lot of those cars came with broken insulators. Lionel also made this car with two plastic girders. The car came with blue rubber bands. A lot of the rubber bands came dry rotted. Both of these cars were also made back in the fifties.
I had several of those plastic transformers, but the insulators were ok. The transformers were easily available. The no. 6509 was a grey depressed-center flatcar with two tuscan colored bridge girders. I think the rubber bands were just to hold the girders in place in the box during shipping.