The vehicle was so old my chances of getting them off without destroying the fitting attaching each of them to the lines was nearly zero even with my proper set of flare nut wrenches.

I was in this situation. I took the wheel cylinders off to remove the trailing arms for a bushing replacement and one of the hard lines was rusted and broke. I had never done this before so it took me a few tries (most were bonehead mistakes) to get it down but I took a pre-made 12" piece of brake line (nickel-copper), a line bending tool and bent the piece to fit exactly the factory line. the factory line was not 12" so I had to add a tad more than 1/2" to each bend going toward the rear of the car and to the front toward the brake hose fitting. It fit perfectly. I did the other side because it was rusted but still seemed solid. I already had some OEM cylinders on hand that I swapped into the old spots so hopefully ill never have to do that again.