I use Brasso and steel wool on Steel all the time.... See the Howe C thread today for an example.
Quick lesson in manufacturing cost reductions... It is cheaper to plate than it is to polish. End of lesson.
What that meant was the most of these parts are good solid steel that was either polished or plated depending on the timeframe and quality of construction.
If you remove the rust you are left with steel and plating, if you polish by hand carefully, you can usually blend those two together into a really nice finish. Most folks cannot tell on my machines where the plating and the steel are different. (I can, because I spent hours staring at it)
On some machines the plating was too far gone, so I wire brushed it the rest of the way off and polished the metal with Brasso or Flitz metal polish (but I will be trying "wadding polish" next time) I have done this with a few handwheels as well, it takes more work that the original companies wanted to put into it, but you can because time/money ratios are ignored by collectors....
The easiest way is a soak in evaporust.
The more challenging way is steel wool (or synthetic steel wool (green/blue scrubbies)) and oil, or Brasso, or wadding polish, or... etc.
My local SMG sells two sizes of black doughnut, small and large, the large usually stretches over fine