An Alternate Way to Think About Tightening a Nut

[owen moore]

I saw a movie years ago about the building of the St. Louis Arch. As they added the triangular sections on top of each other, they were connected with long tension rods that were hydraulically pre- stretched and then the nuts were run down and torqued before the tension was relieved.
Talking about bolt stretch, I remember working on old Triumph motorcycles, and the manual said to measure con rod bolt stretch for proper torque. Once stretched, I wonder if those con rod bolts are reusable?