Upgrading trains from electrical > mono > maglev

[Radenska]

Hi all, enjoying this game for a long time, but always stucked reaching the mono era, as I have no mood to rebuild the trains from scrap, as needed originally.

Have found this help sofar:
"To save time converting a train with lots of orders from one railtype to another, send your train to a depot of the old type and sell it. While the depot window is still open, convert the depot to the new railtype, and the next train you build will have all the orders of your previous train. The depot window must remain open throughout this operation. Note that you can only convert one train at a time using this method, but you may also convert the empty depot back to the old railtype so you can convert another train using the same depot."


It is silly, because where/how shall I send out the new type of train when changing back? Need to build new track, send out the new train, build old track, switch depot to old, let the train enter, switch the truck to new (to avoid next train enter to the same depot and stuck), sell train, switch depot to new, rebuild train, let it out from depot, build old track... In case I have one big system, it can't be done, I can't really send all my trains to a newly built depot one by one...

Any solution? HELP!

[kamnet]

Check out the Universal Rail Type NewGRF and accompanying replacement guide.

[Alberth]

Instead of mass-replace all your infra structure with a few clicks, see it as an opportunity to check everything, and setup a new network, slowly replacing the old one (many people never even get to that point and keep some lines in electricity).

[planetmaker]

If you really want to convert the whole network from rail to monorail or maglev:
Send all trains to depots.
Build new depots adjacent to the existing ones.
Convert the map the new tracktype
visit each pair of depots
* build for each old train a new monorail (or maglev) train and share its orders with the old train (orders as "goto ctrl+click on old train")
* Sell the old train
* Repeat until each rail depot is empty
Bulldoze rail depots

[V453000 :)]

The universal rail newGRF is a great solution but for some reason has a limit of 30 km/h, leaving you with following options:

1. make all depots universal, let trains autoreplace, convert tracks to desired type of rail after ALL trains are autoreplaced.
This is probably the fastest way to do it, as trains get to the depot in their full speed.
2. use universal rail type everywhere, but wait for some time and autoreplace just like normally.
This option takes ages, but takes least effort.
3. use universal engine and autoreplace to it first, then convert tracks, and then autoreplace trains to the final ones.
This is a weird option but it is possible. Universal trains are not only slow, but also doing 2 autoreplaces in short succession can mean the trains do not find the depot automatically because they do not need servicing for the second time.

or ultimately, you could just load NUTS Unrealistic Train Set and use that universal rail (do not use universal rail GRF because it would overwrite NUTS with the speed limit), which allows to run all trains in full speed, meaning that autoreplace to other track types is just as fast as any other autoreplacing.

I honestly do not see why would you do it manually with either of these two newGRFs.

[Radenska]

Have downloaded everything as adviced, but will try first as planetmaker suggested, as obviously I want to use it for a saved game which seems can't be changed with these patches. This 'share orders' order was the missing link I was looking for - mostly playing this game for fun, and not much experienced to find all the nuancées

Answering the question why would I want to replace the whole system - why not?

Thanks All!