I am aware an "export" wont get me there 100% of the way, but I still need a way to get my env variables, etc

There is no way to export it, but using the CLI, you can use the shell command which will drop you into a shell that injects your railway environment variables into your local Env as long as you don't close the shell

yeah i am aware of that, but unfortunately that wont work for me.

That's the only option for you unfortunately