Fixed it. once I looked at the Westell logs
Finally realized that the static routes I built were fine and the problem is that I was being blocked at the firewall.
Can't put the router in the DMZ and can't port forward to the the router's lan ip address (192.168.1.1). Allowed remote admin on the router and it works fine - would be nice if the router allowed you to choose some obscure port but I guess it's not really much of a sexurity risk as the router's wan port is inside the private network anyway.