Model Railway Forum

Flashbang reported on the Hornby Forum that following a posting on another forum the Hornby Adams Radial had been incorrectly wired in respect to the wiring from the power contacts on the front bogie back to the DCC socket. The result of this is that your decoder would be fried immediately. This problem appears to be random but did affect R3333, which was introduced in 2016. Mine had been sitting in the cupboard since that time, so I took the body off and the wiring was as described by FB. I managed to un-solder the two problem wires and re-attach them to the correct points on the plug. Surprisingly, not as difficult as I thought, but care is needed. With a TCS DPX2-UK decoder fitted and the body off the loco ran beautifully on the rolling road - the slow running was very impressive. I put the body back on, placed it on the track (layout), and it runs like a pig with a sore head. So body will have to come off again and some investigating to be done.

I heard about this problem after I had purchased my Adams Radial a couple of years ago. I sent it back to Hornby, after contacting them and they rectified the problem and returned it to me in Australia. tI tested it OK on my rolling road. I don't have a layout at the moment so I have no idea how it will go on the track.

It affected all the original releases as my LSWR 488 was wrongly wired. I removed the socket and hard wired a decoder in place simplifying the rather spiders web of wiring Hornby fit in the process.