Config. Ubuntu Apache Thin Rails: proxy not working

Please help, I am trying to set up a rails app on Ubuntu 12.04, ruby, gems, rails, apache, thin, are all installed. If I start a thin cluster I can go to the website and the welcome page shows

domain.com:5000
domain.com:5001
domain.com:5002

all work so I know that thin is doing its thing, and I can get apache without proxy to load the index.htm (though without the assets working correctly as expected).

However I can't seem to get apache to actually pass the request off to the thin servers! I get a soft 404 (page can't be found) error or the It works page, and I don't know why.

here is the sites-available file

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName myapp.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /home/sim/public_html/railsapp

    <Proxy balancer://thinservers>
        BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3000
        BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3001
        BalancerMember http://127.0.0.1:3002
    </Proxy>

    ProxyPreserveHost On
    ProxyPass /assets !
    ProxyPass / balancer://thinservers/
    ProxyPassReverse / balancer://thinservers/

    <Proxy *>
     Order deny,allow
     Allow from all
    </Proxy>
</VirtualHost>

Solution

Maybe point it at the public folder?

    DocumentRoot /home/sim/public_html/railsapp/public