After serving an apprenticeship with an engineering firm in Blackwall, Adams worked in France and Italy, becoming an engineering officer in the Sardinian Navy. In 1854 he became locomotive superintendent of the North London Railway Co (NLR), a position he held until 1873. While at the NLR , he designed the first radial axle and subsequently developed the ‘Adams Bogie’ which enabled locomotives with four leading wheels to negotiate curves at higher speeds. He then went to the Great Eastern Railway’s Stratford Works and in 1878 became locomotive superintendent of the London and South Western Railway Co, a position he held until his retirement in 1895.