Originally Posted by
63rickert
Track dropouts are long because you warm up on a 15 cog and race on a 14. Unless you warm up on a 16 and then race on a 14. Changing chainrings or taking links out is not done so frequently. Changing cogs is pretty much every time. Unless you don't care and warm up on the same gear you will race.
Chain tugs are real convenient when wrestling with heavy wheels and approximate dropouts, as on a DL-1 or other bikes of that era. Very difficult to set chain tension on a DL-1 w/o tugs. If your DL-1 is operating w/fixed wheel you will have tugs. Track bikes don't need tugs, no one would bother when everything is working well.
It not just track bicycles. Pre-derailleur road racing bicycles were the same and were often marketed as road/track bicycles. The rear fork end slot length had to accommodate flip-flop hubs with a small fixed gear cog used on the flats and a larger, freewheel cog used on major climbs and descents. Campagnolo's Cambio Corsa derailleurs also used wheel position, rather than chain tensioners, to deal with different cog sizes and the proprietary dropouts had very long slots.