I've read Overriding named routes provided by Rails 3 Engines and solicited some fresh answers, but all of the solutions feel pretty gross if you're goal is to remove routes in bulk.
Prepending routes to override the engine's routes was effective; however, it becomes time consuming when the engine is resource rich. Nesting resources compounds complexity.
An::Engine.routes.prepend do
match "/route_goes_here" => redirect("/404")
end
In my case, I want to feel confident all the routes are gone gone.