I went up and spoke with a wheel-builder guy, an old track racer who has a little shop here in the city, and his take on the track headsets vs. the road headsets was that the track headsets were indeed not only stronger due to the increased number of bearings (and other differences) but also smoother. (Hard to imagine.) Yes, they lowered the front end of the bike, but that was not the sole aim except perhaps to decrease the amount of torque and/or lateral leverage power during hard sprints in order to reduce damage.

He also showed me a couple 70s track frames and forks with, you guessed it, eliptical forks, but ALL of the frames with eliptical forks had holes drilled in the forks for brake calipers, so perhaps they were either dual purpose forks or simply borrowed from a road bike. Are there holes drilled in your eliptical forks?

In terms of skidding on a track, no indeed, 1/8 or 3/32 is the least of your worries there, but on the streets with track bikes we skid all the time, and having a 3/32 road ring suffer metal fatigue and fail is just not an option in traffic or going down a hill. With a "fixie" you can get away with a 3/32 road ring as long as you have at least one brake caliper mounted on the bike.

Does anyone know what the technical differences are between a track bottom bracket and a road bottom bracket?