This paper reports facile preparation of half-sandwich trihydrido complexes of ruthenium based on the reactions of the readily available precursors [Cp(R3P)Ru(NCCH3)(2)][PF6] With LiAlH4. The target complexes were characterized by spectroscopic methods and X-ray structure analysis of Cp((PhPr2P)-P-i)RuH3. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.