I'm in a bad mood again.

Yes - I went into Truro today. Now if Truro was ever famous for just one thing it would be the Teachers' Training College. If you have been following my journey you will know that Nova Scotia is a province of mainly small villages in isolated situations and until the road-building process that started in 1918 and is still not yet finished these villages had no connection to any other.

But if you can't bring the children to education the province realised that it needed to bring education to the children and in 1876 it created a small College in Truro to train teachers to educate children in the wilderness. These teachers, once they had qualified, were sent to these isolated villages, lodging with parents and teaching children in empty fishing sheds and generally integrating into the village to which they had been sent. And this programme continued until 1960.

The college itself is a magnificent building crowned with a copper dome and spire, and features as the centrepiece of the Truro Heritage poster. And when I came here in 2003 I had a quick look for the building but couldn't find it but today with more time on my hands I wandered around until I found it. And I had to find it too, because the people whom I asked, including the lady in the Tourist Office, knew nothing about it.

So here's the building - the most significant in Truro and probably the most influential in Nova Scotia. And the reason I couldn't find it is that there is a huge concrete bunker - a public library - right in front of the building, built on the lawn, and a huge modern building - the police station - built in the old courtyard. And of course the copper dome and spire have gone - sold for scrap.

It's been abandoned for probably 30 years and there's a notice on the building - "The Truro City Council is actively seeking new opportunities for this building". well, how about using the money spent on the new police station to refurbish the building and moving the police into here? Or demolishing the library and ......

I'm not going to go on and on about this because I'll get more and more depressed but my opinions about Canadian preservation efforts is starting to sink to the same depths as those of the USA. Or of France. Or of the UK. People no longer have any pride in their heritage.

So to cheer myself up I went in search of what may well be the oldest intact steam railway locomotive in the world. And that sat on a plinth outside in the rain and the snow in a derelict mining town in Nova Scotia for many years until it disappeared.

And I've found it - kept in an industrial unit where it is being surveyed by a group of engineers who liberated it from its depressing situation and restored it to working order.

It's called the Albion and came to Nova Scotia from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1854 when an English company bought one of the coal mines here in a town called Albion (now Stellarton) and for a long time it was considered that 1854 was the date of manufacture. But it's clearly not - you compare this design with any other design of 1854 and the evolution has been considerable.

This is clearly a first-generation steam locomotive that was presumably bought second-hand in 1854 for shipping over here to match the Samson - a railway engine of 1837 that was already working here and is also on the same site. But even when you compare the two the Samson has features that are more modern than the Albion and thought is now circulating around a date even earlier than 1837 for the Albion. If this is the case you are beginning to put this locomotive into the "Stockton and Darlington" area - it matches the geographic region with coming from Newcastle upon Tyne. That might even date it as early as 1820 which would make it the oldest surviving steam railway locomotive in the world.

And the people who have it are fully aware of this and this is why they "liberated" it from its plinth and put it in storage. It's been inspected by experts from the UK and some kind of news is awaited. In the meantime it's been put out of the public gaze until the people here are certain of what it is that they have. And why I had to blag my way in to see it this afternoon.

At least that cheered me up. .