Originally Posted by bostontrevor
It looks like there are eyelets on the rear (yay) but none on that fugly fork (boo). If you're gonna make a fixed gear street bike, there's no reason not to make it fender-/rackable.
Still, I like that Raleigh has picked up on the fact that a good chunk of the market would like a tracklike bike that can take brakes. If it weren't for the damn fork, that's the bike for me.
I decided to get some nice narrow (for 23mm) full coverage fenders for the track bike one day. After I had both fenders completely installed I realized there is no way to get the back wheel out of the track ends with full fenders. It's not even close to working. That's why the conversion with horizontal dropouts has nice new fenders.
To get the rear wheel out you would have to cut the fender at the exact top of the wheel diameter.
Edit post: I also thought it would be great to have two brakes when using the freewheel. However when I flip the wheel over to a smaller cog and pull the wheel back,the brake shoes are up in the middle of the tire somewhere. It sounds wrong, but to have a fixie to take full fenders and rear brakes a forward facing horizontal drop out is a lot less trouble.