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Central Station, footbridge, platform building and Yard walls are Grade II Listed. The listing is not completely clear but makes no mention of the Tentercroft Street to Oxford Street footbridge that I assume is excluded from the listing although the curved wall and Oxford Street footbridge steps, flanked by walls and copings, are included in the description and listing. The Grade II Listing describes the station as ‘1848, with later C19 and C20 alterations. Possibly by Joseph Cubitt or JH Taylor of London for the Great Northern Railway Co.’ Almost all other sources I can find attribute the station to JH Taylor (I think this is John Henry Taylor 1791 – 1867 of 22 Parliament Street London but nobody seems to be sure) it is of course possible that they are all copying each other. Contractors were Samuel Morton Peto and Edward Ladd Betts. The station bridge was replaced in 1999, with lifts, partly reusing elements of the old bridge. Canopies installed over the platforms and tracks in 1884 were removed, probably in the 1960s. In 1989 platforms 1 and 2 were removed for the car park and Platform 8 was out of use. This platform, now number 6, was cleared of the vegetation and debris and covered with granite chippings by the Rotary Club of Lincoln Colonia in 2017. At the same time they also added planters on the station platforms to help improve the first impressions of travellers to the city. The station has been the only station in Lincoln since the closure of Lincoln St. Marks in 1985. It retained its "Central" suffix following St Marks' closure, but since 2019 has been formally known as Lincoln Station. Network Rail instituted a major re-signalling scheme during the years 2007–2008. As part of the overall scheme, Lincoln's platforms have been renumbered from 3–7 to 1–5: (the current platform 1 was previously platform 3, 2 was 4 etc.). All four signal boxes; High Street, East Holmes, West Holmes and Pelham Street Junction were closed and replaced by a new state of the art Lincoln Signalling Centre near the West Holmes box on 1st September 2008. Pelham Street (on 18/8/08) and West Holmes boxes were demolished, but the High Street and East Holmes boxes are listed buildings and are preserved. In the first half of 2018 the final stage of a £2m station improvement program was underway that included the restoration of the building, reopening the original archways and restoring the original ground floor sash windows, with repairs to the original brickwork.

The Great Northern Railway (GNR; initially called the London and York Railway) was founded by The Great Northern Railway Act on 26th June 1846. The main line ran from London via Hitchin, Peterborough, and Grantham, to York Railway Station, with a loop line from Peterborough to Bawtry via Boston and Lincoln, and branch lines to Sheffield and Wakefield. The contract for the first 75.5 miles of the line was awarded to Thomas Brassey who worked with J. Cubitt as the engineer. They started with the Peterborough to Gainsborough section of the loop line, as the ease of construction over the flat fens promised an earlier return on investment. In 1848 On the 17 October, the 58 miles of loop line opened between Werrington Junction (just north of Peterborough) and Lincoln, with GNR trains using the Midland line from Werrington Junction to Peterborough. The line from Lincoln to Gainsborough didn’t open until 9 April 1849. In January 1923, the GNR became part of the London and North Eastern Railway Company (LNER).