To have the rails log output to the console you can add this to your ~/.irbrc file:

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require 'logger'

if ENV.include?('RAILS_ENV') && !Object.const_defined?('RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER')
  # for rails 2
  RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER = Logger.new(STDOUT)
elsif defined?(Rails)
  # for rails 3
  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
end

This only enables the log on the machine you’re currently on. If you want to enable logging to the console as a project wide feature so that anyone who checks out the project and runs the console also gets logging, then you can put this in your environment.rb file (or an environment config file like development.rb):

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if "irb" == $0
  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
end