<p>I don't have a Rails environment set up and this is actually quite hard to find a quick answer for, so I'll ask the experts.</p>

<p>When Rails creates a table based on your "model" that you have set up, does Rails create a table that mirrors this model exactly, or does it add in more fields to the table to help it work its magic?  If so, what other fields does it add and why?  Perhaps you could cut and paste the table structure, or simply point me to a doc or tutorial section that addresses this.</p>

In ActiveRecord, models are created from database tables, not the other way around.
You may also want to look into Migrations, which is a way of describing and creating the database from Ruby code. However, the migration is not related to the model; the model is still created at runtime based on the shape of the database.
There are screencasts related to ActiveRecord and Migrations on the Rails site:
http://www.rubyonrails.org/screencasts