EoinC said:
The reason for horizontal dropouts is so that you can tension the chain whilst keeping the wheel aligned.
I was just trying to get a sense of whether or not the track regs for bikes for non-Keirin track events were official-or-peer-pressure since, as noted by
BobbyOCR, there is a technical difference between a horizontal dropout and a rear entry track-end ALTHOUGH you can obviously, properly tension the chain with a frame that has so-called horizontal dropouts.
I can't recall if it was Fausto Coppi, or someone else who rode the 50s era, whose "track" bike had horizontal
road dropouts.
If rear entry track ends/"dropouts" are the only obvious
visual requirement (beyond the OTHER UCI mandates), I guess ONE temporary solution to getting a "proper" Pista frame would be to find a framebuilder who can braze/weld a set of Campy-or-homemade track "dropouts" onto a given frame ... OR, of course, it could be a DIY shade-tree project -- learn to braze/weld, make the dropouts from some steel stock
or cannibalize some kid's BMX bike
... and,
Voila!?!
Rider safety, particular for the OTHERS on the track, is definitely important in non-pursuit events ... but, I've seen crashes for what have to be described as being caused from/by reasons other than a rear wheel sliding akimbo in a dropout ...
I'll try to track down the e-mail address of one velodrome operator that I think I have and see what their take is on the bike configuration (at least for their operation) since I'm obviously much more curious about this matter than I was a week ago! I may not have anything subsequent to report back on this matter ...