It was Friday. A winter storm was barreling across the country. And Philadelphia resident Hussein Halemeh really needed to get to Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania, where he was filling in as York County’s emergency veterinarian.

The 31-year-old shares a car with his wife and didn’t want to leave her stranded in the snowstorm. Plus, he doesn’t like to drive. So he set out on a multi-hour, multi-modal journey.

He took a trolley in Philadelphia to a train to Baltimore, stopped at the Mount Royal Tavern for a drink, then hopped on the light rail to Hunt Valley, where he caught a bus to Shrewsbury.

On Monday — after tending to dogs, cats and a guinea pig — Halemeh was reversing course, back at Penn Station in Baltimore, waiting along with dozens of other travelers for their trains.

The MARC trains were canceled Monday, and a few Amtrak trains were running late. The train station was relatively quiet.

Union Station in Washington, D.C., was similarly sleepy. A fallen tree north along the northeast corridor delayed some trains. Just one more travel challenge — especially for those trying to catch a flight out of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

One train passenger said he was worried he and his family might not make it to BWI in time to catch their 2:20 p.m. Southwest flight to Oklahoma.

“It’ll be really tight,” said Max Lubitz, who flew into the airport last week with his wife, their three kids and three family friends. They came to town to attend the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally that takes place annually in D.C.

Lubitz said if they miss the flight and can’t catch another, they might consider checking into a nearby hotel.

He couldn’t believe that the same storm that pummeled Maryland had also swept through Edmond, the Oklahoma town where he lives.

“It’s surreal,” Lubitz said. “This storm is so nationwide.”

As the train pulled into the BWI station, Lubitz told the group to get ready to run.

“Everyone have their suitcases? What about the bag of chocolates?” he asked. “Okay, let’s move!”

For some travelers at BWI, things were running surprisingly smoothly.

The airport was quiet Monday afternoon, with short security lines and relatively few passengers milling around ahead of their flights.

Hundreds of flights scheduled to depart from BWI were canceled Sunday. But because crews worked throughout the storm to clear and treat the airfield, many Monday flights took off on time.

“Could have been worse, for what they made it out to be,” said Ibrahim Abdullah, a Goucher College student who was waiting for a car at the airport. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Even so, everything hadn’t gone according to plan.

Abdullah’s flight from Atlanta to BWI had been delayed from Sunday to Monday.

The relative ease of travel through BWI was a surprise, too, for Jennifer Stogsdill, in town from Denver to be with her daughter during a medical procedure, in part because she knows that “Baltimore people lose their minds when there’s snow.”

For some preparing to depart from BWI, the winter storm even offered a welcome extension to their plans.

Audrey Castro, who works in wildland fire mitigation, had come to the area from Oklahoma for a conference. She and her family were supposed to fly back on Saturday, but thanks to weather, had extra time to explore D.C.’s Smithsonian, International Spy Museum and other attractions.

Suzanne Senechal and Steve Huyer, meanwhile, were among the roughly 2,000 passengers on a Carnival Cruise ship who got an extra night on the water, after heavy snow at the cruise liner’s South Baltimore dock prevented it from docking over the weekend.

In the end, that wasn’t such a bad deal, the couple reflected as they made their way to their flight back to Providence, Rhode Island.

For Sean McNelis, the journey to get to BWI hopefully proves more eventful than his flight.

McNelis, who works for a wholesale flooring distributor, had convened near the Southwest ticketing counter with a group of colleagues, all preparing to fly to Las Vegas for a trade show.

The group had changed their flight from Monday morning to late afternoon because of the storm. But getting to BWI had been a journey for McNelis, an Ocean City resident who drove from a snowboarding trip in the Pittsburgh area back to the Eastern Shore on Sunday to be ready for his work trip.

That drive took him close to 11 hours, and, thanks to a defrosting snafu, he went almost the whole way with a shattered back window on his Toyota RAV4.

For all that, McNelis didn’t expect travel issues to detract much from his big Vegas trip — until a colleague reminded him that their later-than-expected arrival would mess with their Monday night dinner reservation.

“We’re missing a nice dinner at this French restaurant,” said McNelis, “so now I’m pissed.”

Back at Penn Station, a man on his way to Greece via the Newark Airport said he showed up for his train two hours early, just in case the weather delayed him.

Sylvia Marciczkiewicz, 18, said she was visiting her brother this weekend, her first trip in Baltimore. Amtrak canceled her train back to Philadelphia on Sunday, so she rebooked for Monday morning. Amtrak canceled again.

At noon she finally boarded a northbound train.

Nearby was Rutgers University student Akshay Musalimadugu, 19, who said he had to catch an earlier train home after his original train was canceled.

“The snow was an unexpected factor, but it added to the fun,” he said.

As for Halemeh, the emergency veterinarian, he was content to sit on the bench, wait for his train and read a book, Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation.” Of the eight different legs of his journey, he had only had one hiccup so far.

Halemeh said his bus to Hunt Valley was canceled, so he spent about $35 on an Uber to get to the light rail station, which was already operational again.

“Props to the MTA,” he said.

Altogether, Halemeh said, he was relieved to avoid driving several hours through the snow. He said his route added about an hour or so of travel time compared to a car commute.

“It just takes some planning,” he said. “I get to read the whole time. I know I’m not going to get into a car crash. And it’s pretty relaxing. ... Taking life slow is good for you.”