because the pedantic coot Sheldon Brown said so on his website

I'd cut him some slack, because he was a nice guy and also because he's dead now. But folks on BF seem to follow this rule of his religiously, and I don't see any sin in saying dropout when referring to those thingies on track bikes.

Track-ends people, they are track ends (or that's what I always called them).

So was there anything on the steerer?

It's not religious! Track ends are designed not to let the wheel drop out, that's the point. ;)

Ohhhhhhh! I get it!

After I get the bike back from Rob, perhaps next week, I will look again. As I said in my original post, the frame and fork steerer have the same serial number stamped on: 1492. Frankly I don't expect to find anything different when I look again, though finding traces of a fifth digit would be excellent. But this next time I look I am also going to look inside the head tube. If I see putty-filled rivet holes, then I'll be sure.

[QUOTE=rhm;16080691 I am also going to look inside the head tube. If I see putty-filled rivet holes, then I'll be sure.[/QUOTE]

Remember: some CBs had only a transfer on the head tube, no badge...but if it's a Holdsworth-era CB it would be more likely to have had the badge.

Yeah, that is pretty much what I'm thinking.

I am as satisfied with the Olympic Sprint ID as I can reasonably expect to be. Sure, I'd rather it be a sixties Witcomb than a Holdsworth-built Claud Butler, but I'd still prefer a genuine Claud Butler to a bogus Witcomb. What I'm wondering now is, would anyone ever have copied a Claud Butler of this period? Did the Claud Butler bikes of the sixties carry the prestige of the Claud Butler marque of the early fifties? I think it pretty unlikely, but what do I know. So by Occam's razor, it has to be a Claud Butler Olympic Sprint.