Ticket to Ride Europa 1912: how to draw if both deck and discard are empty?

Question

It's Ticket to Ride Europa 1912 with Warehouses and both the deck and discard piles are empty, but there are still open cards to draw. The rules say

Each time a player uses his turn to Draw Train Car cards, he must first draw the top card off the Train Car deck and place it in a Warehouse (either his or another player's) without looking at it, before drawing his own Train cards in hand.

I conclude that open cards cannot be drawn, because the top card cannot be drawn and the prerequisite fails. However, there is another paragraph

In the unlikely event there are no more Train Car cards left to draw or reshuffle and one or more players have run out of Depots, all Warehouses are immediately emptied out and the Train cards reshuffled into a new draw pile.

Yes, there are cards in the Warehouses, but what does "no more Train Car cards left to draw" mean? The open cards are there, but they cannot be drawn because of the first rule. Does it mean that the cards from Warehouses must be shuffled in this situation? If not - then what's the point of the second rule at all?

Answer 1

I think you've answered your own question when you ask "then what's the point of the second rule at all".

As you say the rules state cards going into warehouse must be taken unseen from the top of the train card deck and placed unseen in a warehouse.

"no more Train Car cards left to draw" would mean that the draw deck in empty and there is no discard to shuffle in. Face up cards would, as you say, not follow the rules of a card going unseen into a warehouse and thus could not be taken.

So if the draw deck and discard is empty then all cards from warehouses will be returned as the rules you quoted say.