Here's the .htaccess code for 301 redirects...
### redirects ###
redirect 301 /page_name.ext
http://www.domainname.tld/new_page_name.ext
When I'm going to replace or remove a page...
I create the new page
upload new page
check site for any links to old page update to new page
check sitemaps and update (google yahoo etc.)
search web for IBL's to the old page... contact them to update links to the new page
then add 301 to site
remove old page..
usually when you make a change to a page name or remove a page you lose a bit on the rankings. It does come back, but I've found the loss and time to recovery tends to be a bit less if I leave the old page up until all the other things are done.
Hope that helps!