[Wavytone]

Mark, I'm reading but I'll try to stay back on topic.

Firstly no-one makes "off-the-shelf" observatory grade telescopes under 40cm designed to last several decades, small enough to fit in the dome at the observatory. Any thing like that will have to be a custom one-off and its quite clear this will be beyond the budget.

That leaves amateur-grade equipment (up to 40cm aperture) which poses exactly the same problem they have now when it fails (which it will). Within this bracket the only off-the-shelf solutions with fork mounts are Meade/Celestron/Questar, the rest are all either dobsonian, or german equatorial on the basis of choosing any of various OTA and mount alternatives - but it will be a german equatorial.

Which brings us full circle to the initial premise of retaining the existing Meade 16" OTA and putting that on a commercial german equatorial.

Either raise the budget substantially to allow for a one-off custom telescope made to fit, or forget about the fork and live with the Meade OTA (or another OTA) on an equatorial, or go dobsonian.

None of these fit the initial needs Greg indicated, which implies the needs must change.