Richard,
Can you explain a little a mor eabotu what you are trying to accomplish, and where you are at thus far?
-Are you trying to set-up an SVN server and repository for managing and versioning the rails application you are creating?
-Are you trying to set-up and SVN client so you can checkout/install plugins, etc from SVN repositories into your rails application?
-What OS are your on OSX, Windows, or Linus/Unix?
-Are you using an IDE such as Aptanta?
Some general thoughts/tips:
for general SVN information and downloads look at: http://subversion.tigris.org and http://opencollab.net
for a free yet powerful graphical subversion client look here: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
for a Windows IDE I use Aptana and it make life much easier: http://72.3.219.182/rails/ or http://aptana.org
for a RoR stack that includes Subversion (SVN) look here: Ruby Cloud Hosting, Ruby Installer, Docker Container and VM or search for InstantRails 2.0.
