Just to clarify one point: I only use Google Earth zoom to confirm what I am seeing in Potlatch is the railway. All tracing mentioned above is with Bing/Yahoo. Nothing is copied from Google.

Welcome to OSM Peanutz. Venturing out with a GPS and collecting traces in the map void is at the heart of this project. Map what you see on the ground and it's all good.

Once you start mapping your area it might encourage others to contribute too.

Hey Craig,

Good choice for a GPS. I have the Vista HCX and found it to be excellent. You should get awesome accuracy with that model.

When mapping, you might want to make sure "Lock On Road" is switched off in the map setup menu.

Cheers!

I use OSMTileDownloader to create OziExplorer maps from OSM data.

There is a lot of potential for OSM in under-developed nations. You never know who is working in those countries, and who might have the ability to contribute such as foreign aid workers etc. From a recreational/tourist point of view, adventure motorcycle riders travel through these nations and can be potential source of GPS tracks. Just go for it and you knows what it might inspire on a local level.

Mapping walking tracks is a real nightmare. I gave up attempting that some time ago as tree cover played havoc with my Garmin Vista. I do have a Vista HCX on order and it will be interesting to see how it goes.

In the upper Blue Mountains you have the added problem of high cliffs interfering with GPS signals.

Good work. It's great to see mapping in our regional areas. I checked out your river not rending problem and did two things. Changed the direction of the river ways to towards the coastline and forced a render of OSMARENDER using Information Freeway (http://www.informationfreeway.org/?lat=-28.54284478969428&lon=153.5120200070555&zoom=12&layers=B000F000F) (by pressing R on the requested tile). If you look at the map (osm.org/?lat=-28.5524200039433&lon=153.500347035951&zoom=14) and change the Base layer to Osmarender, your rivers show up. They should turn up in the Mapnik base layer in a week.

I expect the forced render did the trick, not changing the river direction.