Rolling Stock History

[boxman]

Earlier in this forum I asked about how to get a feel for the age of Loco's and their quality. Now how about rolling stock. I have a Burlington high cube 41' box car smooth sides PN 5139 along with a dozen other cars with 4 digit PN's. Thanks for the help...Boxman

[Franz T]

That's a tough one. 4 digit Part  #'s usually are from the '80s and earlier...
Look for the degree of molded detail on the car. The more detail, the newer the tooling.. Also, check the lettering. Older cars usually had little more than reporting marks and crude dimensional data. If the car has a lot of LEGIBLE fine lettering, it is usually less than 10 years old. Another dead giveaway is the paint job. Older cars have that nice, thick "dip job" paint that looks to be about a scale foot thick , Model Power is particularly notorious for that, although Bachmann has a few beauties out there as well.....
Hope that helps.....