Where the streets have no name

This weekend, mi hermano del constructor Jonesy brought his daughter around and the three of us worked on the Victorian city terrain.

Jonesy and I focussed on the baseboards and drybrushing the Sarissa Precision City Block buildings, while Lex applied roofing tiles to the two Warbases terraced houses.

I'm quite happy with the way these are shaping up.  Instead of the Sarissa pavements we're going to be using  a paving pattern printed onto card, at least for our first game, which may eventually be replaced by something a little more substantial.  I've looked at several Victorian streets, original and re-created.  Many of them, though not all, have a pavement that is virtually flush with the road surface, with little or no raised kerb as we have with modern roads, so a thin card pavement is more appropriate than you'd first think.

One thing I am a little worried about is the cobblestone surface.  This is basically a wallpaper glued onto sheets of 3mm MDF and coated in black textured masonry paint.  It's more vulnerable to damage than I expected. Just stacking the sheets together, or putting buildings on the road surface, it seems too easy to scuff the paint off the raised areas of the cobblestones.  I'm wondering if the other people who've used this material have done anything extra to protect the surface, or if I'll just have to live with repainting the surface every so often.