Node.js was sth. I jumped on early. As soon as I saw the video of Ryan's talk, I tried it. I guess the first version I tried was <= v0.5. Then the community went... nuts. But it's quite different than what I view Rails to be.
Rails is like a culture. There are a lot of pre-baked things when you run "rails new blurb", but most of it is useful, and you'd create them anyways. But to a newcomer like me, that's a bit overwhelming. That's my lament about it. Wrt Node.js, that's just a product of lots of ignorance. All you actually need is a JS file, or a makefile with ".js.ps:\n\tpuppyscript -c $< > $@". But the wheel is reinvented with such pace and redundancy that it's a hell of a platform nowadays. Even its creator, which is a very smart guy, has said farewell.
Any framework seems "Crazy" and "Magical" at first. But once you get to know it, it becomes clear.
Rails is an opinionated, full featured framework with plenty of bells and whistles.
The core of rails is convention over configuration which means you will have a hard time going against the it.