Well, after a great deal of googling, I have found an answer that got the TrackPoint working. Here is what I did.

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the lines used fot the serial
mouse.

The section should look like this.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "Emulate3TimeOut" "50"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Open a konsole and su, and init 2. Edit the file with mcedit and save. Restart the xserver with init 5.
At this point the track point works as a three button mouse. BTW as a work around while I was working on this, I enabled the mouse to be operated from the numeric keypad through KDE. That did work, even when the track point didn't. There is a bluse Fn key on a thinkpad, you need to hold it down to activate the numeric keypad. Fn is like another shift key. On a laptop there is not a separate key pad like you get on a 105 key keyboard.

I hope this post helps someone else save the hours I invested in getting this thing going.